


You and I, We Mer-Maid for Each Other

by valethra



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Because I Wanted In On Mermay, Fluff, Gay Shiro, Gay/Ace Keith, M/M, Pansexual Lance, mermaid lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-03-09 11:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18915934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valethra/pseuds/valethra
Summary: Keith is an apathetic 20-something working a job he doesn't particularly care for, living in his older brother's shadow, and wondering where his passion went after a childhood accident seemingly stole it away. Lance is a totally NORMAL human specimen and definitely NOT some kind of shape-shifting mermaid. Why would you even say something like that?





	1. When You Blotted Out the Horizon

Keith sighed as he stared into the horizon. It used to be something poetic, but these days it was a straight line that didn’t change for the most part. There were waves that rippled the ocean, sure, but it wasn’t exactly tumultuous. An occasional bit of excitement and otherwise exactly the same as it always was. Exactly like his life.

He wasn’t unhappy. Just bored, he thought. There was a time when he’d had passion and drive and that time was long past. These days he worked just to do _something_ half of the time and he only interacted with a total of about five people. One of whom was his brother, so some might say it didn’t count as a social connection at all. Another of those people was his brother’s husband. And yet another was a coworker. Did he have “friends”? He wasn’t sure, and he was even less sure if he cared.

Enough introspection— he did have a job to do, and it wasn’t so bad. He liked getting to spend so much time by himself. Even if it was on a filthy beach. A beach so filthy, so destroyed by human negligence and overconsumption, that it hardly looked like a beach at all. Keith’s job was simple. He worked on that stretch of beach by himself and he carefully collected and organized the trash there. He had a variety of tools to make it easier, and he was careful to wear something like a jumpsuit even if it was hot out. He’d learned the hard way that sweating was better than taking a broken bottle to the kneecap.

Picking up the trash was step one. He tended to collect it in boxes or bags. Then he had to sort through it with his own gloved hands, separating glass from plastic from paper. Anything that could be recycled would be recycled and the rest would be sent to the landfill.

It was a pretty ambitious goal. Keith admired his brother’s work a lot, and so he was happy to help out even if his job was less than thrilling. Shiro was a conservationist, a successful marine biologist, who wanted to restore both ocean life and a sense of community to this beach some day. He’d employed a hand-selected team to help him accomplish this, and his little brother had been gifted this one stretch of sand to tidy up as he saw fit. Other people might have seen it as Shiro saddling Keith with some nothing task just to keep him busy, likely because he felt he had to do so for his brother. Keith knew that wasn’t the case. He knew that Shiro was putting a lot of faith in him by letting him tackle it alone. He and Shiro understood one another, so it didn’t really matter what other people thought of them.

Keith was nearly done for the day. (On a very memorable day that hadn’t seemed like it would be memorable when it had started, and so he distinctly. remembered it being a sunny Tuesday early in August.) Being on his knees for so long was beginning to hurt. He felt a crack in his joints when he stood and thought he was way too young to be feeling that way. Maybe that kind of thing just ran in the family— Shiro often seemed several decades older than he was. Keith looked down at his containers, studying them for a moment and confirming to himself that he’d organized everything right and he hadn’t missed a thing.

He was in the process of bending over to pick up a container and put it in his little wagon machine when he heard that voice. It was cheerful and bright, not unlike the sun that was beating down cruelly upon his head. He squinted into the unchanging horizon and found that it was different. Different as in obscured by an unfamiliar silhouette.

“Hello!” The stranger called, waving a frantic arm. The tone and gesture would have made more sense if this man were a friend of Keith’s that he hadn’t seen since high school, so he briefly sorted through his memories and tried to place him somewhere. As if he could tell from such a distance anyway. As if trying to jog his memory, the stranger jogged closer, still waving. Still excited in a mildly unsettling way. Keith was easily overwhelmed.

“H-Hey,” he called back weakly. His voice cracked. It always cracked, but still. His wave was awkward. He’d blame it on his sore muscles if the man asked.

After twenty seconds of uncomfortably quiet waiting, the man was close enough that Keith could see him, could speak to him without shouting at the top of his lungs. And he definitely didn’t recognize him. He was lanky and tanned and dressed in clothes that were too big and didn’t quite match— a buttoned dress shirt that wasn’t buttoned correctly and with the sleeves rolled up haphazardly over casual cargo shorts that dwarfed his slender legs, making them look like chopsticks or twigs.

“What are you doing out here all by yourself?” The man asked innocuously. Keith just squinted at him for a moment, wondering if he was hallucinating from the heat, because something about this guy was strange in a way that he couldn’t place. Where the hell had he come from, anyway? There had been no one and then there had been a weird man, like he came straight from the ocean. Hell, maybe he had. His hair was wet.

“I work here.”

“Working? Doing what, exactly?”

Keith gestured at the mess all around him.

“Cleaning it up. Sorting it. Getting it shipped out.”

The man looked around to get a sense of what Keith meant, and his eyes went wide.

“Such a mess! How on earth did it get this filthy?!” He reacted like he was just then noticing all the trash and junk. Or like he’d never heard of littering before. “I see it in the water, but I had no idea that it was this extensive.”

Keith shrugged.

“Yeah, well, we’re trying to fix it. Used to be worse. See all that sand? That used to be covered in trash too.”

The man noted that Keith had, in fact, gotten quite a bit of it cleared. His eyes got even wider. They were a remarkable shade of blue. They almost matched the water.

“My god, you did all of that alone?!”

“...Over the course of several months, but, yeah. I pick it up, sort it, load it into my little wagon machine here, and drive it to the recycling plant.” Keith slapped the side of his vehicle for emphasis. He legitimately didn’t know what he was supposed to call it because it wasn’t really a car, but it was much more than a wagon. ‘Wagon machine’ would have to do.

The stranger was not concerned with the wagon or the technicalities of Keith’s job. He seemed more interested in Keith himself. His clothes, maybe? Whatever it was that had piqued his interest, the man studied him intently, his gaze eager and curious.

“I did not think you were that strong. You do not look very big.”

“It’s... usually not heavy.”

“But that contraption surely weighs hundreds of pounds, does it not?”

“I—“ Keith’s voice broke off in a choke. “I don’t carry it, obviously? I drive it. I sit in the chair and use the pedals. You know, like a car?”

“So THIS is a car.”

“Not exactly, but the idea’s, um... the same...”

This was already one of the most confusing conversations Keith had entertained in a very long while. Normally he wouldn’t talk to strangers at all if he could help it. He was beginning to remember why.

“Well, enough about that,” the man said, suddenly changing the subject. He indicated this physically with a rapid shake of his head that sprayed a few droplets of water around him. Keith couldn’t figure out why his skin tone was strange. Bronzed, but with some kind of tint, almost bluish in hue at the cheekbones. “I am in awe of what you have accomplished! It is very good to see someone working to correct this issue.”

“That’s... nice. Thanks. I think.”

The man smiled a bright, if somewhat lopsided, smile, and as he did so he extended a hand. He had long and spindly fingers that showed no signs of work or wear.

“I am Lance! It is delightful to make your acquaintance.”

Keith stared at his hand, unsure if he should reciprocate or not. He took his gloves off before returning the shake. Bizarre or not, he wasn’t about to rub garbage on some stranger’s hand.

“Keith. Right back at you, I guess.”

The handshake was firm. Too firm, like Lance didn’t know how hard he was supposed to squeeze or was too excited to contain himself. This guy was strange. Really strange. And Keith was the type of person who thought most people were strange. He looked down at his feet and noted that Lance (if that was actually his name) wasn’t wearing any shoes.

“But anyway, you shouldn’t walk around barefoot. There could be broken glass or something in the sand.”

“Barefoot?” Lance looked at Keith’s feet and made a weird face. “Aha! Barefoot. When one’s feet are bare. Uncovered. By... those. Things.”

“Those things? ...Shoes?”

“Yes! Shoes.”

“Where... Where are you from?”

At that, Lance’s expression changed, if only for a fleeting second, into one of panic. His eyes flickered about. That face of his was too expressive to hide anything he was feeling, Keith was sure.

“America,” Lance said.

Normally that might have been plausible. Lance didn’t have an Australian accent, and if he had to guess, Keith didn’t think he was Japanese either (like he and his brother were). He definitely wasn’t a New Zealander. But his English was fluent, so if he were a tourist, Keith would assume he was an American.

But Keith was certain that Americans knew about things like cars and shoes. And people didn’t usually panic like that when asked where they were from.

Lance didn’t give Keith a chance to follow that question up. Instead he stood as tall as he could, almost puffing out his chest.

“Sorry to have delayed you for this long, but I had a simple question and you were the first person I saw! If you do not mind telling me, where can I find all of the people?”

Keith blinked.

“All of them? They’re not all in one place, but if you’re talking about populated places... if you follow this road long enough you’ll get to a boardwalk kind of thing. Not too crowded, but there are places to eat and some shops.” Keith pointed in the general direction of civilization. 

Lance did something like a little bow of gratitude, and when he’d straightened himself out again, his smile was so bright that it blotted out the horizon, eclipsed the ocean, surpassed the sun itself, and Keith felt blinded and confused for a very different reason than he had several minutes ago. He said his goodbyes, Keith waved him off, and their paths split once more.

Keith watched his back as he left, filled with some odd mixture of fascination and bewilderment.


	2. A Series of Strange Meetings

The moment Keith arrived back home he was tackled at high speed by a ball of black fluff. 

Kosmo, the family dog, was well-behaved, but he loved Keith and hated that he had to go to work. And so he always jumped on Keith as soon as he got home. Keith had gotten so used to it that it no longer knocked him off of his feet. And he was pretty proud of that. Kosmo was a large and athletic dog.

As soon as he’d calmed the dog down, the two of them headed into the kitchen.Keith’s older brother was seated at the kitchen table with a newspaper. Adam was busy cooking and nodded in his direction. Shiro smiled when he saw him.

“Keith! You’re home early.”

“So are you. I got a lot done fast,” Keith said with a shrug. He gave Shiro a casual slap across his shoulder as he ran past him to go to his room. He almost always showered right after his work shifts. As soon as that was over and done with, he returned to the kitchen, hair still dripping slightly as he tied it into a hairband.

Adam, as he often did, had cooked dinner. And Kosmo, as usual, hovered by his feet as he scooped his latest creation onto three plates, hoping to catch a stray noodle or dropped piece of beef.

The three of them usually talked about their days over dinner. Shiro had to deal with a lot of people on the funding end of things and usually represented the public face of his little mission. It wasn’t especially hard for him, since he was a well-put together and charming sort, but his workload was often heavy and it was a relief for him to share his occasional frustrations with his family. Keith rarely had any exciting stories. Sometimes he found something weird or valuable in the sand, but that was about it. Adam, meanwhile, took care of the household, handled a lot of the phone calls and paperwork, and did some athletics in his spare time.

Keith let Shiro talk about work for a while, and he reminded him that there was a meeting coming up. Keith had to attend those like everybody else, as Shirodidn’t treat the manual workers like second-class citizens compared to the scientists. There was typically some kind of meeting every month where everyone got to go over their progress and catch up with one another. Not that Keith was close to many of his coworkers.

“And you?” Shiro asked when he was done. Adam sensed Keith struggling for a response and filled in the blank himself. He’d spent the afternoon swimming laps in their pool, and Kosmo had made a new friend on his afternoon walk. He also said something about a call from someone that Shiro seemed to avoid. But that was all that Adam had to report, so the conversation circled back to Keith once more.

“...I don’t know. It was weird,” Keith said. Shiro raised an eyebrow.

“What was weird?”

“Not the job, I mean. Everything was fine, nothing out of the ordinary. But there was some guy. _He_ was weird.”

“Weird how?”

“I don’t really know how to explain it. He kind of popped out of nowhere, he was really excitable, and he talked like he was an alien or something.”

“An alien?” Adam echoed, smirking slightly. Keith groaned.

“Yeah. You know. In TV shows, when aliens try to blend in, and they know some things but don’t sound convincing? Like that.”

Keith described the conversation about as well as he could, and Shiro agreed that it was definitely strange. When the food was done Shiro offered to do the dishes, but Adam sent him to bed. Shiro rarely tried to disobey him.

“...What was that phone call about?” Keith asked when Shiro was out of earshot.

“Don’t know why he avoided it... I think maybe he doesn’t want to get your hopes up if it doesn’t work out,” he answered over the clatter of dishes. Keith frowned.

“Get my hopes up about what?”

“We’re on a list. You know we’ve been looking to adopt for a long time now. Apparently we’re good candidates for a baby.”

Keith was stunned. A baby. An actual, living baby.

Keith should have been happy to hear it. Delighted, really, because he loved his brother more than anything in the world and Adam had become a part of the family over the years (and was also technically his brother if only by marriage). And he knew that they were happy together, that they would make great parents, that Shiro had wanted nothing more than to have a child of his own for years and had feared he would never get that chance. This was a dream come true for both of them. Adam was clearly surprised by Keith’s reaction, or his lack of one, but Keith didn’t know what was expected of him in that moment.

He didn’t know why. He didn’t know why his stomach sank when the word “baby” came from Adam’s lips. When discussing it hypothetically Keith had gone as far as to suggest names for the fictional baby. So why was he afraid of the real baby? He didn’t know. It didn’t make sense.

“That’s great,” he finally said. “Shiro... probably thinks it’s too good to be true or something. These things take time to register with him.”

“I know that,” Adam said teasingly. And of course he knew that. Keith didn’t need to explain to him how Shiro worked.

Keith went to bed that night with a stomach full of guilty knots, and it was still on his mind at work the next day. He couldn’t focus on more labor intensive work, and so he combed the sand with the tool that resembled a hoe. He’d done a more thorough job than he’d realized and hardly seemed to turn up anything.

“Hello, friend!”

Keith stiffened. He turned slowly. It was _that same fucking guy again_. Lance. He ran over and had a much easier go of it this time. Because he had acquired a pair of a shoes. One of those strappy pairs of sandals that held on tight but let the toes breathe.

“You got shoes,” Keith droned. Lance nodded.

“Yes! Sandals! One of the townsfolk sold them to me after I got some money for one of my gems. The people of the boardwalk were quite friendly! I was given a snack and directions into town, and there was a man interested in precious stones there.”

“...Gems?”

Lance nodded again, and he casually pulled, out of his pocket, a completely surreal-looking gemstone of some kind. Keith couldn’t tell if it was a sapphire or an emerald or something else, because it was the same blue-green as the tropical waters of a place like Hawaii and almost glowed.

“Someone gave me a hundred dollars for one,” Lance explained, sounding proud. Keith wasn’t an expert on minerals, but he was sure Lance’s stone was worth a LOT more than that. It was perfect and it was huge and it was already cut. “I have plenty more where that came from.”

“You shouldn’t just _show people_ things like that. You could get mugged.”

“Mugged?” Lance said the word like he had never heard it. Keith sighed.

“Robbed. You could be robbed. If the wrong kind of person knew you carried around gemstones and cash, they could use a weapon and make you give it to them.”

“How often does that sort of thing happen?!”

“Not a LOT, and this area’s pretty safe, but you should still be careful.”

“Thank you for the advice! I will be more proactive about my safety from now on. I had not realized people could be so violent.”

Keith shook his head. He was certain that Lance had lived his whole life under some kind of rock. Had he never heard of murderers? Or did he come from a sheltered background in the mountains where he’d never interacted with anyone else?

Lance, for whatever reason, seemed very interested in Keith. He had a lot of random questions about his job, about his clothes, about the weather and about what else was in the area. Keith didn’t exactly mind. Lance allowed him to continue working as he chatted and the questions were easy enough to answer that it didn’t cost him any brain power. But he wasn’t at all used to that kind of attention. People usually decided he was rude or awkward and started avoiding him shortly after meeting him. He’d kept it that way.

When they parted ways that time, Keith watched Lance leave, trying to figure out where on earth he went. But he just walked along the sand until he faded into the horizon, disappearing somewhere around the big rocks that jutted out by the distant hill.

Keith was sure that time that he would never see Lance again. He was wrong once more. Lance apparently lived somewhere nearby, because he was at that beach again the next day. It frustrated Keith that he could never tell what direction he had come from. He tried asking Lance where he lived and he dodged the question. Lance went into town again, and when he returned he had an absurd amount of cash (he’d sold some of his “treasures” along with more gems) and questions about what else he “would need”, giving some vague excuse about losing all of his stuff. Keith suggested a jacket, more clothes (perhaps in the right size), sunscreen, a water bottle, a cell phone, and a bag or a backpack to carry his things. Lance thanked him for the advice before he was off again.

They saw each other the next day. It hadn’t been a great day for Keith. The whole “baby” thing had weighed on him and he hadn’t slept much, and he’d had a nightmare about things he hadn’t thought about in a while. It wasn’t one of his work days, but he went to the beach anyway just for some peace of mind and sat on the creaky little dock there, looking out at the sea as the sun set.

“You do not have your jumpsuit on,” Lance said from somewhere behind him. Keith couldn’t feign surprise at this point. The other man sat down next to him.

“I don’t work today.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Just felt like it.” After a pause, Keith decided to pretend Lance wasn’t there to interrupt his routine and to do what he’d planned on doing anyway. He wanted to dangle his feet in the water, so he moved to untie his sneakers. “ _You’re_ here literally all the time, though. So what is it? Do you live near here?”

Lance didn’t seem to be listening to him. He was staring at Keith’s feet again. Keith began to fear that he was one of “those” people. And then Lance asked what was perhaps the most bizarre question he had asked yet.

“You wear two pairs of shoes? Or are there undershoes?”

“These are—” Keith was so surprised that he didn’t know how to answer that. “They’re socks! Just— here.”

He took off his socks and handed them to Lance. They weren’t anything spectacular. Just regular black socks. But Lance pulled at them, eyes wide and mouth set in a delighted smile as he pulled them onto his own feet and wiggled his toes around. Keith frowned at the thought that they would be slightly damp when Lance gave them back. Walking in wet socks sucked.

“Delightful! Socks,” Lance said mostly to himself. Keith scoffed in disbelief.

“Where the fuck did you say you were from?”

“America,” Lance repeated. Keith knew he was lying. He knew they had socks in America, at least. There was no way someone could grow up in a developed place and have no idea what socks and shoes were. Anyone with a television would have to know.

“Name an American city.”

“Does one always wear socks or does it depend on the type of shoe?”

“Name a SINGLE American city. Any will do. Even a state would be fine.”

Lance didn’t answer him. He didn’t even bother to try. He just moved to take the socks off and hand them back to Keith. Keith waved a hand.

“No, no,” he said. “Keep them.”

Keith didn’t want to walk home in wet socks, and he had plenty more at home. He’d live wearing just shoes for a little while. Why WAS Lance always damp, anyway? His hair was always wet. His clothes were always stuck to his skin in places. Like he went everywhere right after taking a swim or a shower and didn’t have enough time to towel off. But what were the odds that he’d do that every day?

When he looked at Lance again, his eyes were almost watery, his expression touched. He started to rifle through the little backpack he had acquired.

“I have to give you a gift in a return,” he explained.

“You really don’t have to,” Keith argued. “They’re just socks.”

Lance handed him a bizarre but beautiful little contraption. Keith was so confused as to what it was that he didn’t refuse it right away.

“Take it,” Lance said. “I insist!”

It was shaped like an uncut gemstone, but it was made of something like glass or acrylic, and inside were what _looked_ like live pieces of coral and seaweed. They still had their color. It also seemed to glow slightly, like his strange gemstones. There were flickering lights inside reminiscent of tiny fireflies. Keith had seen similar things in tourist shops, but nothing quite like this one.

“...It’s nice,” he admitted. “Alright.”

“I am glad that you like it!”

“Where did you get it?”

“That does not matter, does it?”

“I guess not.”

Lance didn’t say anything for a minute or two. Keith stared at the sun as it started to slip out of sight. He could feel eyes on him.

“Something is bothering you,” Lance said. Keith groaned.

“So what if it is?”

“Do you not wish to speak about it? Where I am from, emotional honestly is encouraged. It does no good to keep things bottled up inside.”

“I don’t even know you.”

Another pause.

“Do YOU live nearby?”

“I do. With my brother and his husband and a dog.”

“Is he an older or younger brother?”

“Older. By kind of a lot.”

“Do you love your brother?”

Keith laughed incredulously.

“What kind of question is that? Of course I do. I’d do anything for my brother.”

“Just checking. I suspected that you are, in fact, more affectionate than you let on.”

“Am I supposed to be ‘affectionate’ with strangers?”

Lance laughed. Keith hadn’t told a joke. It was a genuine question. Lance patted his arm before he stood, slinging his backpack casually over one shoulder.

“Thank you again for the gift of socks! But you should not worry so much, friend.” He waved as he walked away. “Until next time!”

Keith kept calling Lance “a stranger” and Lance kept addressing him as “friend”, so they seemed to be approaching this relationship— whatever it was— from different angles. 

Keith remained on that dock alone, feet dangling in the water, until the moon rose, and then he dried his legs off with the towel he’d brought and headed home. And while he walked, he studied his latest bit of room decor.


	3. Bizarre can be Beautiful

Seeing Lance nearly every day, whether it was for a long while or a short while, became a part of Keith’s routine. He expected to see him. And horrifyingly, he started to worry or feel a bit sad when he didn’t. Lance was always entertaining if nothing else. The days where he didn’t see him were now boring.

Keith was thinking about that when he showed up for the organization meeting. Shiro was answering phone calls from somebody somewhere. He sat in the “conference room”, which was really just the biggest room they had in their little office full of a bunch of folding metal chairs and the rolling ones dragged from their respective desks and computers, and waited. People arrived slowly, usually one at a time, and formed their little cliques to talk about work and their families and sports games.

Keith got bored. He stood and headed for the hallway so that he could get a soda from the vending machine, maybe a candy bar. There, he nearly bumped into a young woman. She smiled as soon as she registered that it was him, and he feigned annoyance. Which was a harmless part of their banter. She knew he didn’t meant that.

“Keith! It feels like it’s been forever. We’ve been so swamped here lately that it feels like it’s been three or four months, not just one.”

“Shiro said something about that. The guy’s been up all night. How’ve you been?”

“Good. Great, actually! Do you remember that pretty blonde I told you about?”

Keith was interested now. His eyebrows raised.

“I do.”

“She agreed to go with me for coffee!”

“That’s— that’s great, Allura. I’m glad to hear it.”

Keith would never quite understand people like Allura, like his brother, like Adam. They were so honest. With themselves. With everyone around him. Allura could walk right up to a pretty girl and ask her on a date, having no idea whether or not she would be open to it, and feel no fear. No apprehension.

Keith had _never_ asked a boy out. He’d agree if the right person asked, but he didn’t know that he would ever have the guts to make the approach. Men were often self-conscious about their perceived masculinity. What if he asked someone out and they were offended, even disgusted? He didn’t want to risk it. Allura had no such fear of rejection.

He had also never told anyone that he suspected he was some sort of asexual. People barely understood or accepted what being gay was. And most people seemed to have no concept whatsoever of what asexuality was. What would they say if they knew? Keith had a feeling he’d be single for a long time, but it was nice to see Allura‘s confidence.

Allura, however, wasn’t about to accept that as their status quo. As they walked to the vending machine again she went on her usual spiel. That she knew Keith was a hopeless romantic even if he didn’t admit it, that she knew he would be popular if he’d just put himself out there, that she knew a boy who was just his type and would tell him that Keith was cute if he’d just let her. And as usual, he told her to give it a rest, though he laughed as he did so. Even if he wasn’t ready to take the plunge, he DID appreciate the fact that someone thought so highly of him.

The meeting, while dreadfully long, passed without trouble, and there was good news all around. Allura dragged Keith to a late lunch with her. One of those tacky little places that had hoped to become a tourist trap and failed. She talked about her date for a while. Allura had a thing for intelligent women, which made sense because she was an intelligent woman. Some kind of scientist. Keith knew it had something to do with the coral reefs.

“And you?” Allura asked. Something in her tone made Keith nervous.

“What _about_ me?”

“I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of everyone else, but your brother tells me you’ve been talking to some strange man on the beach.”

“Wha— he told you about Lance?!”

“He did! He says that you always sound irritated but don’t seem to realize just how often you talk about him.”

Keith grumbled, picking angrily at his sandwich.

“I don’t know what else to talk about.”

“I’m sure you could think of SOMETHING if you tried. But you can’t think about anything else, can you?”

“Of course I can think about— lay off!”

“I think, perhaps, that you like him?”

“...Okay. Fine. He’s cute. What about it? It’s nothing serious.”

“What is it that you like about him?”

“I don’t _like_ -like him. He’s just... I don’t know. He’s funny. I don’t think he’s doing it on purpose, but it makes me laugh. ...Or, you know, chuckle. Silently.”

“You like funny guys?” Allura seemed surprised to hear that. “And here I thought you’d like them tall, dark, and handsome.”

“For the last time, it’s not like that, but... I’m too _in my head_ all the time. I like somebody that can get me to loosen up a bit.”

Allura was delighted by that information. Keith had to deal with a half hour more of her teasing before he finally got to leave. He told himself that Allura was wrong and that he did not have a crush on weird beach guy as he, well. Marched right back to that beach despite not having any obligation to do so. He didn’t have to do any manual work on meeting days.

As always, Lance was there, but this time he seemed a bit startled to see him. He was spinning around in circles like he was looking for something.

“Such a surprise,” Keith greeted him, voice thick with sarcasm. Lance laughed. It sounded nervous. Forced. “What’s up with you?”

“I... am not entirely sure what I should be doing next.”

“You don’t seem to know much of anything, to be frank.”

“I am WELL aware of that, thank you very much!” Lance stopped moving and faced Keith with his arms folded indignantly. “But I do have my reasons, I assure you.”

“Oh?” Keith grinned, imitating Lance’s pose. “I’ve been waiting for this! Let’s hear it.”

Lance huffed.

“I am... suffering from a brain injury that has caused some form of amnesia.”

“Oh, come on. You can do better than that.”

“That is the truth!”

Lance went on to give Keith some elaborate story about living on a boat, out on the sea, that had crashed, leaving him stranded somewhere near that beach. He’d been left with almost nothing in terms of clothes and everyday items and only his treasures had survived. And in the process he’d hit his head on a rock and forgotten a lot of things. And, apparently, he had always lived on boats and hadn’t known much about the world of land-dwellers to begin with.

Keith didn’t buy that story, but he also didn’t know what the truth was. He figured that at least some part of it had to be true. Even if it was just the part about spending his whole life on the sea.

“If that’s the case, where have you been sleeping?”

“Wherever I can. I have spent the night in shelters, sometimes the oblong metal hotels. Other days I sleep on the beach!”

“That’s... really dangerous. Doesn’t that technically make you homeless, too?”

“Do not be silly. The earth is my home, is it not?”

Keith sighed. He wasn’t about to argue with that one.Maybe he should have been more concerned, but Lance seemed to be taking decent care of himself despite his circumstances. He was clean, and he had never complained of hunger. 

After a bit more talking, it became clear that Lance really didn’t know where to go from here. He had all of the basic toiletries he needed and he wasn’t starving or anything, but Keith knew he’d need some more things if he hoped to get a job, at least. The main thing he’d need would be a cell phone, but could he get a decent plan without an address? It was worth looking around for one, he thought. Maybe one of those disposable phones with minutes loaded onto it would work for now, so long as he could access the internet at a library. 

Keith didn’t remember agreeing to it explicitly, and he didn’t know how he’d gotten roped in, but before he knew it they were walking side by side towards the boardwalk. It was a longer walk than Keith remembered and he was surprised Lance did so much walking all the time. He did have long legs, though. Maybe it was easier on him.

They talked about the ocean as they walked. Lance did, anyway. Keith didn’t like to talk about it much. There was a part of him that would always love it and wanted to see it cleaned up and restored and another part that was terrified of it. He had nothing to add that wouldn’t give that away. Lance’s love for it was obvious in the way that his eyes sparkled when he thought about it.

They saw someone walking a dog, and Lance stopped them to pet it and to ask eight hundred questions about what kind of dog it was, what its name was, what it ate, what it liked to do, etcetera. He asked the same kinds of things that a grade schooler would. And then he asked Keith if that kind of dog “came in more colors”. Which it did. Lance went on for a while about how incredible nature was, that it could produce so many kinds of things and somehow have them all be so beautiful. Keith hadn’t thought about it that way before.

The two of them got to town right around when Lance was asking Keith what his favorite kind of ocean fish was. It was a question he didn’t quite have an answer for, though he did say he was somewhat partial to seahorses. Lance liked that answer a lot.

“You probably can’t keep up with a smartphone bill if you don’t have an address,” Keith explained as he looked at some store’s selection of electronics. “And they’re really expensive, so you might not be able to afford it if you don’t have a job, gemstones and treasures or not.”

“I am not entirely sure of what ‘expensive’ is.”

“That’s relative.”

Keith helped Lance pick out a cheap but functional phone that, admittedly, looked like a burner cell that a drug dealer might use. Lance paid for it and was way too enthusiastic about thanking the overwhelmed cashier for her great services. Keith practically pushed him out of the store, informing the poor woman that his friend was drunk. Which wasn’t true, but seemed less weird.

After that they ended up looking at clothes. Lance insisted that Keith try some things on too, and he tried on one of those biker jackets just for the hell of it. Lance liked it too much. As he was helping him adjust the shoulders and making sure it was on straight, his eyes suddenly became fixated on Keith’s face. Specifically, the lower part of the left side. His fingers brushed against what he saw there and Keith flinched away from the unfamiliar feeling of contact.

“That is quite a wound,” Lance mumbled, voice thick with what sounded like legitimate concern. The scar on Keith’s face was the remnant of a gash that had been somewhat short, but quite deep. People usually noticed it. People rarely asked. He didn’t let anyone see the similar cuts that existed elsewhere. “What happened?”

Keith pulled away from him and took up the jacket and hung it back up. He felt ridiculous all of a sudden.

“It’s none of your business.”

“You do not want to talk about that, either?What is it that you like to talk about?”

“I don’t know. ...Stuff. Not _me_.”

He left the store. Lance hurried to pay for his purchases (a pair of sneakers and some more socks, and a larger duffel bag to keep his clothes in) and run after him.

“It is not my intention to upset you—“

“I know.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Lance sat down on a bench with the phone in hand. Keith sighed before sitting down and helping him figure out how it worked. Lance insisted that Keith write down his number “in case he needed anything”. Keith argued that Lance couldn’t provide him with anything because he was unemployed and homeless but wrote it down anyway as Lance reminded him that companionship is also a service, and one that can not be given a price tag.

Keith sent a text just to confirm that the phone was working, and then they parted ways. He was halfway through walking home when his phone vibrated.

_Lance: I have figured out how to indicate facial expressions through the use of text symbols!_

_Keith: it’s called an emoticon, everyone knows how to do that_

_Lance :)_

_Keith: that’s a smiley_

_Lance: ;D_

_Keith: settle down._

_Lance: ;(_

Keith laughed. By himself, in the middle of a sidewalk. And he laughed again as he sent a quick good-night text before he went to sleep.


	4. Something is Fishy Here

After exchanging phone numbers, it became somewhat commonplace for Keith to get a random text in the middle of the day, or perhaps in the morning. Sometimes it was just a greeting. Sometimes it was an excited declaration of a bit of news or information that should have been benign (“I ate a pretzel today!!”). Other times, it was another weird question. Keith usually read those aloud to Shiro or Adam and they’d share a laugh.

Eventually Keith taught Lance how to send and receive pictures, and then the texts became more frequent. They got so used to communicating in this way that it got a point where Lance could send a picture with only a few question marks underneath of it, and Keith would know what that meant and would take the time to explain what he was looking at. What it was called, what it was used for, the works.

They went to the boardwalk together a couple more times. Lance insisted on buying something for Keith, something to make up for all of his help. They settled on the jacket he’d had his eye on the first time. They got cotton candy together and played a sort of game where Lance would point at a pedestrian and Keith would explain what they were wearing or carrying. An umbrella, maybe, or a laptop.

When they were walking back to the beach after one of those outings, Lance suddenly left the sidewalk and ran out into the sand without warning. Keith chased after him, wondering what the hell was going on in this guy’s head most of the time. He saw it when they reached the edge of the water. Dolphins.

Lance grinned and rolled up the hems of his pants.

“Do you want to see a neat trick?” He asked, and something about it was kind of scary. Which was weird. _Lance_  wasn’t scary. He didn’t wait for Keith to answer him before he waded out into the water. Keith groaned and took off his shoes and socks to follow him. 

Lance walked as far as he could without getting his clothes soaked. The dolphins continued to jump, carefree as dolphins typically were. Keith stood beside him. It was nice, he thought. Looking at the dolphins from a distance. But then Lance made a loud clicking sound. Keith could have sworn it was one of the dolphins for how accurate it sounded. The only indication that it was Lance was the volume, and the way he cupped his hands around his mouth to project the sound as far as he could.

Keith nearly fell over as the dolphins changed course and swam directly to them. He worried they’d get beached, coming so close. But the dolphins were smart enough to avoid that, and they stayed back just a little ways, just far enough that that they could still swim around freely. Still, it was closer than Keith had ever gotten to one. The apparent ringleader stuck its head up and chirped back at Lance before it took its friends and left. Lance waved, shouting some kind of farewell in dolphin. Keith waited a moment for his jaw to close before he tried to say anything.

“What the hell was that?!”

“They’re friendly creatures. I just wanted to say hello.”

“Do you speak dolphin or something?”

“It is not a particularly complicated language. Tonal, mostly.”

Lance started to walk back towards the sand. Keith squinted out at the sea for a minute before he shook his head and stomped after him.

“You’re fucking with me,” he concluded.

Lance just laughed at him and Keith had half a mind to punch him. He had a difficult time answering Shiro that afternoon about why his pants were wet. Because he didn’t want to risk sounding like an idiot in saying that he’d been talking to some dolphins.

Two somewhat uneventful days passed. Lance chatted with Keith on the beach before heading off on his usual adventures, Keith worked and went home and answered a stray text here and there. Nothing of note. But on the third day, Shiro called out to Keith when he heard him passing by the gym.

“Yeah?” Keith asked. Shiro sat on a bench and wiped sweat from his brow with a little washcloth. He was wearing a sleeveless athletic top. It exposed his arm. His right one. The one that didn’t actually exist anymore. There was a metal and plastic approximation there where _his_ arm had once been. He should have been used to it by now, but the sight of it always stung just a little, if only because it was technically Keith’s fault that it was there.

“Did Adam talk to you about something the other day?” Shiro asked, as point-blank as ever. Keith flinched.

“He might have mentioned something. About all the phone calls lately.”

“And did he tell you what that was about?”

“...Yeah.”

Shiro smiled.

“That’s good. I didn’t want to spring this on you out of nowhere. But I wanted to let you know that there’ll be someone here tomorrow to check out the house. To make sure it’s a safe place for a child.”

Keith’s eyes widened.

“Wh— already?”

Shiro laughed.

“Already? We’ve been trying to get through to these people for at least a year. It’s about time, really. Not that it’s anyone’s fault. There’s a long waiting list. Babies are hard to come by and they want to make sure that they’re only ending up in suitable homes.”

“So you’re _actually_ getting a baby. ...Boy or girl?”

“Well...” Shiro stood up after he clicked some buttons on the machine, signaling the official end of his workout. “We don’t actually know that. This is just the approval process; there isn’t actually a baby for us yet. That’s a whole other waiting list. But...” He smiled again, and this one was different and a kind of smile that Keith hadn’t seen since the wedding. It was wistful and not directed at anything in particular, but at a future that Keith couldn’t see. “I’ve always wanted a girl. Adam, too.”

Keith stared at Shiro’s arm and then he did his best to seem thrilled and gave his brother a hug, and then he made some excuse about having forgotten something and left the house and ran to the beach by himself. He hadn’t planned on finding anything in particular there. He just wanted to be alone. NEEDED to be alone.

His heart was racing. Aching, even. And he still didn’t know why. For some reason he kept thinking about that arm. About how it got there. He’d worked past most of his guilt about that a long time ago, and he’d been honest about it with Shiro, so it shouldn’t have been that that was bothering him. He couldn’t figure it out. He had never been good at this, the emotional thing. He had a lot of feelings. Too many of them. He dealt with that by pretending he didn’t and keeping to himself.

For several minutes, he stood by himself on the dock. He picked up fragments of rock and skipped them across the water. That was his excuse for doing it. In reality, he was just hurling things into the unforgiving sea. A sea that had, once upon a time, nearly killed him. Nearly taken his brother away. That particular sea was in Japan now, but weren’t they all the same? The ocean was the ocean. Why was Shiro so intent on saving it, anyway? Shiro was a better person than Keith was. Keith was still mad at the sea sometimes.

That was enough of that. Keith started walking rapidly down the beach with his hands shoved into his pockets. He ignored a text from Adam wondering if he was coming back home for dinner, and then he ignored a different text from Shiro telling him he had to go back to headquarters for a little while to sort out some kind of issue.

It was a weird thing to think about, but Keith found himself wondering if Lance was around. It was hard to be so angry when Lance was butchering expressions and tripping over his own shoelaces (he wasn’t used to them yet).

He found himself by the hill, by the outcroppings of rock there. There were large boulders that jutted out of the water. The waves were loud as they crashed against them. Part of the sand was gravel here. There was a sound that was partially hidden by the roaring of water. Keith stopped in an attempt to hear it better. He thought for a moment that it must have been dolphins, but it wasn’t quite that. It was a bit lower than a dolphin, a bit slower, more humanoid and in a sing-song. Like whale song, almost. A series of clicks and whistles that formed music. An unsettling sound, despite how pretty it was, because it was not a dolphin and it was not a whale.

What the hell _was_ that? It was a welcome distraction that Keith pursued in earnest. The sound was coming from the other side of the hill, where part of it was almost hollowed out into a little cave, most of it obscured from the viewpoint of the road by boulders. The ground dipped within that curve and formed a pool. A good hiding place and a pleasant sight. A nice place to sift down and dip one’s feet. Keith, apparently, wasn’t the only one who thought it made a good hiding place. Lance thought the same thing.

He was there. He was looking through his backpack, singing to himself and looking at his latest acquisitions. That was definitely _Lance_ , Keith was sure, but he was... different. In a way that Keith couldn’t process. That blue tint in his skin was obvious now. His ears had been replaced by longer blue ones, almost fins, and there were markings on his face and his shoulders.

Also, he had a tail. A fish tail with big fins. That was definitely a thing. A thing that Keith would have fervently denied had he not been staring at it.

“What—” Keith said, and Lance nearly fell over with shock. “ _What?_ ” Keith didn’t know what his question was. He just knew that he had one and he wanted an answer.

Lance stared at him. He looked down, arms folded, while he stroked his chin. He squinted at the pool of water below him in deep thought. His tail fin swished back and forth in the same way that a person might tap their foot.

“...I am guessing I cannot convince you that this is _not_ exactly what it looks like, huh?”

And then the next thing Keith knew, he was taking an unplanned nap on the sand. He’d seen enough for one day and his body, or maybe his brain, had decided to just give up. Like Lance had just then. He had made no effort to offer an excuse.

He didn’t know how long he was out, but the first thing Keith’s eyes registered when he came to was Lance’s blurry face, and a little too close to his. His eyes were the first thing to come into focus. That intense blue pierced into him, made him _almost_ forget the absolute madness he had been subjected to such a short time ago. And it did take a little while to come back to him, but there were definitely fish tails involved. 

“Oh, thank god! You are okay,” Lance breathed, smiling. “You had me very worried for a while there!” He risked a glance around the room and confirmed that Shiro wasn’t around. “...I did not know your kind did that so suddenly, you know? Just falling asleep.”

“Where am I...?”

“Your brother,” Lance said proudly as he backed away. “You showed me his office building when we walked past it— do you remember? I pounded on the door until someone answered. ...Your brother is taller than I would have expected given your—”

“Shut... up.” Keith groaned as he tried to pull himself upright. He’d been laid across a countertop meant for studying samples with one of those neck pillows meant for long car of plane rides shoved under his head. “YOU, sir, have a lot of explaining to do.“

“I do not know that it qualifies as ‘a lot’. It was, as previously established, exactly what it looked like.”

“But _what it looked like_ is literally impossible.”

“You intend to deny it after having seen it with your own eyes?”

Keith didn’t answer that question. He ground his teeth and glared at Lance, who was dressed in human clothes once more. Clothes that stuck to his skin because it was wet. That explained that.

“Are you a mermaid?”

“No.” Keith started to protest. “I am a merman. Simple semantics, really, as your kind seem to conflate the terms.”

“And all that stuff about crashing your boat and losing your memories— that was all bullshit.”

“What should I have told you instead? Would you have believed me if I had told you the truth?”

“Can all mermaids grow legs and walk around like semi-normal people?”

“No. ...Only royalty. We come from a bloodline of ancient magic.”

“Now I _know_ you’re fucking with me.”

“Do normal people give you glowing pieces of perfectly preserved ocean life?” Keith frowned as he thought about the pretty trinket on his nightstand. He often played with it to de-stress, and he could have sworn that the life inside of it had grown and changed shape and that the lights sometimes got brighter. “We make those from broken bits of seaweed and coral. As a way to eternally preserve their fallen beauty. Sadly, it happens more and more these days.”

“How... how is it that people don’t know?”

Keith’s head was still spinning slightly. He massaged his temples as Lance chuckled at that question.

“I am sure that there are those that know, but we have learned to hide by now. Often with magic. The ocean is more vast than you can possible imagine. ...Are you aware of a place called the ‘Bermuda Triangle’? It is something like that. People sometimes... simply forget that they have seen us.”

Keith eyes Lance with fear and apprehension. He was sitting a bit too casually for his liking.

“Is that what you’re going to do to me?”

“What? No. I have no intention of harming you or altering your memories.”

“Why not?”

Lance smiled fondly at him.

“I came here on behalf of my family to bridge a gap. To learn about your kind. And you, you... have shown me that humanity has something more to offer.”

“...Me?”

“Yes, you.” Lance’s smile faded. His expression became serious, almost sad. “It is said that there was a time when our kinds were friends. But merfolk have been wary of humans for a very long time.”

That made sense, Keith thought. Human beings were slowly destroying the world. Overfishing, oil spills, pollution, trash dumping... denizens of the seas had absolutely no reason to trust humans.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Keith mumbled. “For what we’ve done to your home.”

“I appreciate that. ...I personally believe that we have a better chance of fixing things if we can learn to work together. And our intimate knowledge of the sea would surely be of use. I intend to convince my people of this, so I have been studying humans and reporting back to my family when possible. And I have told them a great deal about you.”

“Really?”

“Indeed! About your brother’s mission as well. It has helped them see some good in your kind.”

Keith shook his head and laughed bitterly at that before he gave up on sitting and plopped back down onto the pillow, covering his eyes with one hand to shield them from the bright lamp in the corner.

“Funny. Because I’ve been pretty conflicted about the ocean for a while now.”

“I had sensed as much,” Lance admitted. “Since you are so reluctant to speak at length about it. But, then, there are a lot of things you do not wish to speak about.”

“...Yeah.”

Lance stiffened at the sound of footsteps in the hallway. The door burst open and Shiro ran in, instant relief tangible in his expression. There was a hand on Keith’s forehead before he knew what he planned on doing. He grumbled as he shoved it away.

“I’m fine,” he said emphatically. “Just got dizzy. That’s all.”

“We didn’t even know where you’d gone, and then suddenly this guy’s at my office door and you’re completely unconscious!” Shiro’s glare softened and he turned to Lance. “I’m sorry for grilling you earlier, though. I thought you must have done something.”

“There is no need to apologize,” Lance said, laughing. “You were only doing your due diligence as an older brother. I would also be mildly suspicious if someone I had never met before showed up with the rag-doll-esque body of one of my siblings.”

Keith wanted to laugh at that mental image. If he’d looked like a rag doll, Lance must have half-dragged him into town or thrown him over one shoulder. And while Shiro tried to be reasonable, he was also protective. It made sense when one considered how he had lost his arm in the first place, but still.

Lance stood and shook Shiro’s hand, bowing at the both of them.

“Now that Keith is awake and you are here, I should really be going.” He winked at Keith. “We can continue this discussion later. Farewell!”

He was off before Keith had a chance to demand that he stay and further explain himself.

“...He IS weird,” Shiro said as soon as he was gone. Keith let out a sputtering laugh at that. “People normally pretend not to notice my hand, but he had about a hundred questions about it. That and my wedding ring.”

“Yeah, he does that,” Keith sighed. “Doesn’t really get social cues. It’s not his fault, but I’ve had to apologize on his behalf more than once.”

Keith allowed Shiro to get his scolding big-brother lecture out of the way. About running off and not disclosing where he was actually going, about passing out far away from other people, and about having to get dragged to safety by people Shiro didn’t know. Keith normally would have interrupted him to remind him that he was an adult, but he let Shiro have his moment.

They went home together that night, in Shiro’s car. And they spent the whole of the ride laughing and reminiscing about the trouble they’d gotten into when they were younger.

Keith thought it was nice to know that, no matter what happened, there were people who would always have his back.


	5. An Alliance for the Ages

The morning after his little tumble on the beach, Keith stormed back there. He did this first thing in the morning, and he knew Lance would be there because he had sent a text message confirming this much. He told Keith to wear swim trunks if he didn’t want to get his pants wet. He also made him promise he wouldn’t faint again, which Keith resented. 

Lance wanted to meet in the same little cave he’d been in the night before. Keith took a deep breath before he rounded the corner, as he had a feeling that Lance wouldn’t have legs. He was right. Lance was sitting there rather smugly, tail swishing back and forth.

Keith didn’t move right away. He clung to a boulder for support and eyed the merman apprehensively. Lance laughed.

“Come on, now,” he said, gesturing at the spot beside him. “Don’t be shy. I won’t bite you.”

“You’re finally learning to use contractions.”

“I was told that I sounded odd without them. ...Your brother, actually. I can’t exactly hold that against him, because I DID ask, but I had not expected such a direct answer.”

Keith chuckled at that.

“Yeah, don’t ask him a question if you don’t actually want an answer.“

“Are you going to sit down or not?” Keith flinched, and had half a mind to retreat. “I know that you are curious.”

Keith sighed and resigned himself to sitting down. He _was_  curious, admittedly, but also a bit freaked out. The ground was a bit wet beneath him and he was thankful that he’d taken Lance’s advice about the swim trunks. He wanted to try touching some of the scales, but didn’t know how to ask without making Lance uncomfortable. Lance seemed to read his mind. His tail wiggled.

“You can touch it. Go ahead! My kind are not as squeamish as yours when it comes to physical contact.”

Keith hoped Lance was telling the truth as he took his permission to touch his tail. He had expected it to feel kind of gross, like the raw fish he and Shiro often picked up for dinner, but it was nice, actually. Kind of like a lightweight metal, but softer. It felt clean, cool, and smooth. The fins were somewhat sensitive. The ear-fins were similar, though the tips were surprisingly hard, almost sharp. Lance said they had something to do with sensing and evading predators and navigating difficult underwater terrain. They could also sense changes in temperature and helped him adjust. Up this close, Keith was able to determine one more difference— merman Lance had sharp teeth. Not scary sharp, and he only noticed it when Lance grinned, but his teeth were definitely pointier than they were when he was pretending to be a human.

Once Keith had satisfied his physical curiosity, he asked a lot of questions. Lance didn’t seem to mind. He would have been a hypocrite if he did, as he’d subjected Keith to that same thing for a long time. Yes, Lance was his real name, and no, he did not have a last name. He hid his things in a plastic garbage bag and buried them in the sand when he planned to go back home and talk to his family. He could use some magic. His gemstones were a source of currency where he came from. And, yes, he had to return to the water after a certain amount of time.

With the truth established, Lance’s actual needs became clear. The extent of them, anyway. He needed someone to help him learn everything there was to know about humans and their world, because he was far behind despite his valiant efforts to learn and to blend in.

“Will you be my teacher?” Lance asked. Keith groaned and brushed the hair out of his face, mentally searching for excuses to say no, before he agreed.

Keith visited a store where teachers often got their supplies and got textbooks meant for grade schoolers and middle schoolers and brought them to Lance along with more towels and plastic bags.

“If you ruin them by getting water all over them and I can’t even get my money back, you’ll be sorry,” he promised.

Lance had a decent grasp of mathematics— addition and subtraction, and at least the basics of things like algebra and long division— and a surprisingly good hold on astronomy. He said it was because his people had also used the stars to navigate and track the seasons. His knowledge of geography and world history was skewed and incomplete and his understanding of science still made room for magic and a bias towards the importance of the ocean. Lance didn’t know _nothing_ , but there was still a lot to cover and Keith wasn’t aprofessional teacher.

“What are the basics of fitting in? What are the things that any human knows?” Lance asked rather bluntly. Keith frowned as he tried to think of how to answer that question. A lot of that had to do with age, with social circles, with one’s home country. It wasn’t as simple as Lance made it out to be.

“Well, first of all, you can’t keep showing up whenever you feel like without being employed without also having a story about family money or something. Humans have to make money from working so they can buy food and pay for shelter. We can’t just swim around all day and eat whatever we want.”

Lance tilted his head.

“...MUST you all work, though? With all of your prosperity and development and the sheer amount of resources, surely it could be distributed by now, could it not?”

Keith winced. He wasn’t qualified to explain the nature of corporate greed. Not yet, anyway.

“That’s— it isn’t that— listen, I don’t have time to get into all of that, but capitalism’s a bitch. For now, we have to work. Some people don’t like to share.”

“Ah. I understand. My family is quite just, but there are monarchs in other kingdoms that are quite cruel about resources. They demand taxes and the people see very little of their investment.”

“So you know what taxes are.”

“I do! And I am familiar with the structures of monarchy and democracy.”

Lance was smarter than Keith had been giving him credit for. He might not have known a lot, but he was intelligent enough to fill in the blanks and to understand adult human concepts.

Their routine expanded. Keith went to work, and Lance would sometimes approach him to ask a clarifying question or two or just to chat. Sometimes he took a break from studying to head into town and observe humans up close. He returned, one day, with a portable DVD player and some educational discs, and Keith had to admit that that was smart. He kept an eye out for any informative program he could find.

But all of Lance’s learning was confined to text and to onscreen lessons. He still did not understand which information was applicable to everyday life, and what would come up in normal conversation. And those were things he could only learn by experiencing the world for himself. Book learning, it seemed, was largely useless. Keith would have to get creative if he wanted Lance to truly fit in. He did just that.

The first time they went on an “educational excursion”, they went to a pet store and ate lunch at a hibachi place. Lance learned about animals, keeping pets, and Japanese food, and about Keith’s childhood in Japan. The second time, it was an arcade in a shopping mall, and they had Italian for dinner. Lance learned about technology and video games and about making pizza and how ovens worked.

Between their meet-ups Lance would study his books and movies and he would excitedly relay what he had learned when they next saw one another. Every time they went someplace, Lance was able to blend in just a little bit better. He learned to be more patient and less loud. His speech seemed less stilted and old-fashioned. He was still Lance, but he was a bit less of an oddball. Sometimes he surprised Keith in how well he acted “human”. It was most noticeable in the fact that he had his own sense of humor.

They were at a library, signing Lance up for a card and looking at the world’s most beloved bits of literature, when Lance sprung a casual question.

“So where’s our next date?”

Keith shot him a glare over the cover of _Frankenstein_.

“For the eighth time, they aren’t dates.”

“Are you entirely sure?”

“Pretty damn sure, yeah.”

“But why not?”

“What?!”

A librarian hushed Keith, and his face reddened slightly as he took Lance by the hand and dragged him away. Lance had grabbed copies of _Treasure Island_ and, fittingly, _The Little Mermaid_. He sighed and looked around to make sure that no one would overhear this conversation.

“...Look, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you might want to be less obvious about your, uh, _preferences_  in public.”

Lance raised an eyebrow.

“Why?”

Keith made a hissing sound as he sucked air through his teeth, because he wasn’t entirely sure how to answer that.

“People aren’t always okay with that kind of thing. And if you aren’t sure of the stances of the people around you, you could end up in serious trouble.”

“What— with what kind of thing?”

“...Most people are straight, which means they only like the opposite sex. And a decent portion of those people think it’s unnatural or wrong to be anything else.”

Lance nearly dropped his books.

“What?! That’s absurd!”

“Sure it is. You and I know that, but... other people aren’t so nice. It’s only been legal for people to marry the same sex here for a few years. Before that men could only marry women. And it’s still like that in most of the human world.”

Lance shook his head.

“And you act like MY people are so primitive. We may not have your machines, but ideas like that do not exist amongst my people!”

Keith looked glumly at the ground.

“Must be nice.”

“...Are you afraid?”

“Huh?”

“Are you afraid of what people think of you?”

“Sometimes. A-Anyway, let’s check out. You can’t ruin these books either, or else you won’t be able to return them and get more, but they’re totally free as long as you bring them back on time, got it?”

Lance dropped the subject for a while. Long enough for them to check out their books and leave. It was dark out, as they’d gotten a late start, by the time they made it to the part of town that had food, back by the boardwalk. Keith wasn’t especially hungry. They got food from a truck and stood on the boardwalk together. Keith leaned against the fencing there and stared out at the ocean. He could feel Lance looking at him and not saying anything.

“...It surprises me to no end that a culture can become so advanced and remain so hateful. I won’t claim that my people are perfect, either. We have our own social issues.”

“It’s... gotten better. I won’t lie,” Keith admitted. “My brother and his husband have been married a little while now, and most people are okay with that. They’re happy. They want to expand their family soon, actually. They’re looking to adopt a baby.”

“Why does that make you sad?”

“It doesn’t—“ Keith whipped around to face Lance, shocked. He was sure he hadn’t said anything to indicate that conflict. It was like Lance could see into his head sometimes. “Why can’t you mind your own business?!”

“I’m only trying to help. You deserve to be happy. You know that, don’t you? ...Happiness is built on honesty. You won’t find it if you continue to lie.”

Keith sighed, sounding more frustrated than he had expected himself to.

“I don’t know, it’s just... half the time I barely know where I fit into the picture _now_. What happens to me when there’s a new baby that everyone is gushing over? How am I supposed to be an uncle? Will everybody just, I don’t know, forget about me? Is that selfish? I just don’t— I don’t know. I don’t know.”

As soon as he’d said all that he paused, because he hadn’t known those thoughts were there until they spilled helplessly from his mouth. He hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on it. Lance giggled.

“Change is scary! It’s alright to be overwhelmed. You’re making it a much bigger issue than it has to be. If you just admit that you’re afraid half of the fear goes away. It grows when you refuse to acknowledge it.”

“...I’m not good with kids. I’ll be a shitty uncle.”

“That’s not true. You’re very patient when you have to be. You would have given up on me a long time ago if you weren’t.”

“Probably.”

“...You don’t have to agree so suddenly...”

They laughed, and Keith forgot about his worries for a little while. Lance asked where their next date was again and Keith told him they should go to the little theme park nearby, and this time he didn’t bother correcting him. Which didn’t mean it _was_ a date, of course. He just didn’t feel like correcting him again. That was all.

Shiro teased him when he got home, and Allura teased him some more the next time she saw him at the office.

Keith just laughed.


	6. Homeward and Heartward Bound

It had been nearly a month since Keith learned the truth about Lance. A Friday afternoon. That was when Adam sprung something on him that seemed sudden. 

“Friends of ours that live a few hours away,” he explained as he packed his suitcase until it was stuffed. “Also a same-sex couple. They recently got their little boy from the same agency we’re looking at.”

“So you want advice,” Keith said, nodding in understanding. Shiro smiled at him as he threw his duffel bag into the pile. He was a light packer. Only took the essentials. Adam, not so much.

“They’ve been a really big help,” Shiro breathed. He sounded really happy. “But there’s a LOT to go over, and besides, we wanna meet the little guy. If it goes well they might be able to put in a good word for us.”

Keith smiled at them.

“Sounds like a plan. Are you both planning to stay the whole weekend?”

“Assuming nothing comes up.” Adam smirked. “You’ve got the whole place to yourself.”

Keith felt his own expression become a little mischievous, and at that, Shiro’s smile faded. Keith stifled a laugh.

“You can have people over, but nobody fishy, alright?”

“I don’t even know any fishy people!” That was _technically_  a lie, but Keith had a feeling that Shiro meant “shady” when he said “fishy” and not “men with tails”.

“Make sure to lock the doors when you aren’t expecting anybody! And don’t just laze around and order takeout. There’s plenty in the fridge, you should be able to make something nutritious. And—“

“Takashi, honey,” Adam interrupted. “He’s twenty-two. I think he’ll manage.”

“Sure, he’ll manage, but—“

“We should be going.”

Adam shoved Shiro out the front door. Shiro continued to play the role of the big brother until the door slammed, reminding Keith that he should still get up early and warning him not to skip breakfast or stay up too late or avoid going outside. Keith shook his head. Shiro still seemed to think of him as a kid from time to time.

Of course, Keith immediately called Lance. Lance was surprised to actually hear his voice, as they normally communicated via text if not in person. Lance had been wanting to see his house, but he feared that Shiro didn’t like him very much. That was a fair assumption. Shiro’s first meeting with Lance had been an awkward one. (And Keith wasn’t about to admit it, but he also preferred to talk to Lance in private and wouldn’t want his brother or his brother’s husband around.)

Keith didn’t have to worry about work on the weekends. They truly did have the place to themselves. Lance was sure he could spend the whole time there, as there was a pool and a very spacious bathtub that was exclusively Keith’s. If Lance needed to submerge himself he had plenty of ways to do so, and for a long time.

Just for fun, Keith drove his little wagon machine (he still didn’t have a better name for it) to the beach and Lance rode in it with him back to the house after tossing his things in the back. On the way, Keith explained how they had come to own such a nice house. Shiro had made good money before turning his focus to conservation work, and Adam had scored no small amount in prize money in his competitive swimming days. There was a very nice house, practically a mansion, off of this beach that had fallen into disrepair. A beautiful beach manor once upon a time, but it had lost value as the beach had become trashed and abandoned. Shiro and Adam, with Keith’s help, fixed that house up and made it an incredible, state-of-the-art place to live. They’d likely do the same to the beach.

Kosmo had it out for Lance the moment he came in through the front door. He could sense it— that Lance was not a human being. He stiffened at the sight of him, his tail a straight line and his teeth slightly bared. Keith waved him down, and stroked his neck, until he settled, but he still flinched as Lance patted his head.

“This is a kind of dog,” Lance said, and Keith confirmed it. “There are so many different kinds!”

“Kosmo is also a really big dog. Not a lot of them get to be as big as he is.”

“Can dogs swim?”

“More or less. They can’t go underwater and they don’t do it very well, but they stay afloat with a little paddle. He likes the pool.”

Keith gave Lance a little tour. The home gym, Shiro’s office-slash-laboratory, the kitchen, the living room, the guest bedroom, the game room with its little bar, and, of course, the pool. It was built long, so that Adam could use it as a lap pool. A decent portion of it was shallow enough for kids and there was a divider that could keep them from the deeper end. At the other end was a hot tub separated by a wall and stone walkway— just enough space to walk between the two.

“This is quite a space!” Lance shouted as he spun around the grass. “I like the transparent ceiling.”

“They’re glass panels. They can open up when we want to let the air in.”

The house was built long and rectangular and it framed a “yard” that was contained within their home. They’d had the pool and tub installed themselves, and the panels had been their contractor’s idea.

“I have never seen or heard of a house with this unusual shape...”

“It’s definitely not the norm, but it’s not an anomaly either. It can be inconvenient sometimes, since the house is so long and you have to walk pretty far to get from one end to the other, but you can save time by cutting through here. We lock all the doors when there’s kids over so they don’t fall in the pool, of course. Unless everyone is using it and we can supervise them.”

“That came up during the adoption proceedings,” Lance said knowingly.

“Yeah. The guy they sent worried about it too much. He had them both really nervous.”

Lance turned to smile at Keith. He looked a lot more _normal_  now that he wore clothes that fit him, and he looked carefree with his hands in his pockets.

“Everything will turn out well, though. I’m sure. Anyone intelligent would be more concerned with the fact that they did so much of this themselves, and that they can provide such a nice home.”

“...I hope you’re right. They deserve this.”

First order of business: food. Keith showed Lance how the kitchen worked as he made them both a simple stir fry. Lance was too eager about trying Keith’s cooking and wanted to try it from the fork in Keith’s hand. Keith told him to slow his roll. Lance went on and on about how phenomenal it was while they ate and Keith rolled his eyes, ignoring it. Mostly. It was nice to be appreciated even if Lance did oversell it.

After that, Keith gave in to Lance’s insisting and showed him his bedroom. He had his own bathroom attached and his own soaker tub, which was nice for relaxing in when he was stressed. The shower was separate. Lance said something about how easily the two of them could fit in the tub together and Keith ignored him. Lance didn’t seem to realize what he said sometimes. Keith guessed that merfolk were casually flirtatious.

Lance sat on Keith’s bed, teasing him about the fact that he kept that weird ocean-snowglobe on his nightstand. His eyes widened in surprise.

“This is so soft! Nothing like the ones at the motels. And certainly nothing like my usual beds.”

“Which are?”

“Rocks, mostly.” Lance snickered. “Sometimes the sand. We fall asleep quickly, though.”

“I would think you’d live in a castle if you’re a prince.”

“We don’t make buildings like yours. We leave the ocean as it is where we can.”

“Then don’t you have bodyguards?”

“Well, yes, but we don’t fear violence. It isn’t a part of our daily lives. ...You humans seem almost fixated on it.”

“We have to be. Someone will get you as soon as you forget.”

Lance looked around the room from his spot lying on the mattress and took notice of the display shelf on the far wall.

“You have an abundance of those golden statues.”

Keith looked to where Lance was pointing. The “statue” in particular that he was referring to was a trophy, and one with a little figure of a surfer on it.

“They’re trophies. People get them for winning competitions.”

“It would seem you were quite the competitor!”

“I was once. ...Surfing.”

“Do you still enjoy the sport?”

“I don’t... I haven’t surfed in a long time. I, uh, lost interest.”

Lance knew he was lying. Keith could see that on his face. But for once, he didn’t press the issue and left it alone.

Keith showed Lance the entertainment room, and taught him how to play pool on their table. Ping-pong and foosball, too. Lance seemed to like games a lot, and he was able to put his all into a competition and get excited about it without getting angry about losing. Every time he lost he congratulated Keith. Lance actually managed to win a round of foosball. Not bad considering he had just learned it existed.

Finally, the pool. The sky was growing dark, and the last rays of sunlight quickly disappeared, as Lance transformed and jumped into the water. He told Keith to turn around while he did it. Keith offered instead to go change into his swimsuit so that Lance could be ready by the time he came back. Keith hadn’t let someone new see him in a swimsuit in a while, and Lance quickly noticed the reason why, even if he had learned that he shouldn’t point that kind of thing out. The scar on Keith’s face was only one of many like it. He tried not to be so self-conscious for once and jumped in the pool with the merman.

“That is quite a spectacular floatie,” Lance laughed. Keith patted the inflatable lounge chair he’d dragged with him with one hand.

“It’s got cupholders and everything. You can really laze around out here if you want.”

Lance didn’t need to be told that. He drifted through the water, his tail moving only slightly. Keith watched him swim. He could dip in and out of the water effortlessly. No need to hold his breath or close his eyes.

“I had feared that this water would have that unbearable smell and chemical sting, but’s it’s quite nice,” Lance said when he popped back up.

“You noticed, huh? We use a mineral system. There’s only a little bit of chlorine compared to one of those public swimming pools. I’m so used to it now that I can hardly stand the smell of those places.”

“The abundant chlorine was painful for me, actually. I suppose my skin is more sensitive to it. Which is a shame... I wanted to try one of those waterslides.”

“Some humans are like that. It gives people rashes sometimes. Makes them itchy.” Keith smiled at Lance. “...But maybe there’s a waterpark with a better cleaning system. I can do some searching online. A lot of places are switching to salt systems.”

They swam around for a while. Lance seemed totally comfortable in the pool water and said he could even sleep in it if he wanted to. As if to prove it, he curled up at the bottom. Which looked weird. People couldn’t force themselves to stay underwater like that. There was enough space for him to swim back and forth and twirl around. Keith was a pretty decent swimmer for a human, but must have looked ridiculous compared to Lance. He sat on the floating recliner for a while as Lance told him stories about the ocean. Seahorses, specifically, because he remembered that Keith liked those. Apparently nice ones would let you pet them and wrap their little tails around your finger.

As the night drew to a close, they dried off and returned to Keith’s room. They would try out the hot tub the next day. Lance didn’t own anything that could be called “pajamas”, so Keith looked through his dresser drawers for something that would fit him. Lance had such long legs and such broad shoulders, despite his lanky overall build, that it was easier said than done. Keith decided it would be easier to let him borrow some clothes from Shiro.

“I’m sure he won’t mind as long as I wash them for him,” Keith grumbled as he stood up. Lance was sitting on the edge of his bed and staring at the trophies. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. Keith knew he was curious. He cleared his throat. He had Lance’s full attention right away.

“I didn’t— I didn’t lose interest in surfing. I sort of retired early.”

“And why is that?”

Normally, Keith would have no intention of answering that question, because he didn’t really talk about it. Not with Shiro, not with anyone. But he sat down on the mattress with a sigh and noticed, for the first time, that the story was heavy in his lungs and that he would feel lighter if he allowed Lance to have it. Lance remained calmly beside him, sensing his change in mood, and looked at him expectantly.

“I was... injured. It’s how I got the scar.”

Lance’s fingers brushed the wound again.

“This one here?”

Keith swallowed. He didn’t pull away this time as he nodded slightly.

“Yeah.”

“Was it an accident, then?”

Keith looked nervously down at his hands.

“Not exactly. You live underwater, so... so you know about sharks, right? You’ve seen them before?”

“Indeed, I have. They’re usually harmless, but they are fearsome beasts when hungry or angered, to be sure.”

“Well, I’ve seen an angry one. It tried to take a bite right out of me.”

“Don’t tell me you were attacked!”

“I was.” Keith drew in a long breath. He hadn’t told this story in years. Assembling the order of events in his head took an embarrassingly long time. “I was about twelve, still in Japan, practicing for a big competition with some other kids. There were reporters interviewing people, talking to Shiro. There was a bigger wave than I’d been expecting and I lost my footing and fell off of my board, and... I came face to face with a shark. Just my luck, I guess.”

Lance shook his head and hummed disapprovingly.

“It must have been frightening for a child.”

“You have no idea. ...I tried to swim away, tried hitting it with my board, tried whatever I could, but... I don’t know what happened. It was like I was stuck. I realized too late that my ankle was strapped to the board and now I couldn’t just unclip myself and swim away. I’d gotten tangled.” Keith shook his head. For whatever reason, he was still embarrassed by that fact. He was only a kid back then and he’d done the best that he could. “Its teeth grazed me while I tried to keep it from chomping down all the way. Had to shove my board into its mouth, but that only stalled it, and I was still attached. I thought I was a goner, but somebody on the beach saw what was going on and screamed. Most people were too scared to do anything, but not—“ he choked. “But not Shiro.”

“Your brother saved your life?”

“...He did. He got over there as fast as he could and snapped the line, untangling me. But I was already bleeding, and the only way he could get me far enough away from it was to put distance between us, and... it got him. There was so much— it was EVERYWHERE, Lance. It was _awful_. The water turned red. I thought he was gone. I got back to the beach and I couldn’t see him. I tried to go back in, but they wouldn’t let me.”

Keith closed his eyes and inhaled until his lungs were full. Lance gently squeezed one of his hands. Lance had long fingers, but his hands overall were much bigger than one would think.

“He lived,” Lance reminded him. “He’s still here.”

“Not all of him.” Keith swallowed. “It cost him his arm. There was nothing they could do for it after that thing ripped most of it off. They had to amputate what was left from the shoulder and he got the prosthetic instead. I got lucky compared to him.”

“But he knew what he was doing.”

“Yeah,” Keith agreed, somewhat bitterly. “He did.” He touched his own face, felt the slight difference in the texture of his skin there. “I still feel... I don’t know, _ugly_  sometimes. And I wonder how he must feel, losing whole a limb. If he gets mad when he looks at it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Lance pushed his hand away and rubbed soothing circles into the skin with his thumb. “You’re not ugly. You could never be ugly.”

“I think you’re slightly biased,” Keith deadpanned. His lip did slightly curl up at the corner, though.

“And your brother doesn’t resent you.” Lance brushed stray hairs out of Keith’s face and straightened his bangs. It was kind of nice. Keith didn’t normally let people touch him, but this felt doting. Safe.

“I know that. I resent myself, really. For losing my dream. There was a time when I wanted to go pro, but... I can’t bring myself to do it anymore.”

“You haven’t lost anything. Not yet. I’m confident that you can conquer your fears. And get back out there. It will take time, but that’s alright.”

“You really think so?”

“I know it.”

Keith laughed softly— more like a single breath— and pulled Lance into a hug.

“Thanks,” he murmured against him. “For listening.”

Lance laughed and patted the back of his head.

“Thank you for telling me.”

Lance borrowed Shiro’s clothes and slept in the guest bedroom, and he was up early for breakfast. They played video games and watched movies and lounged in the hot tub and swam, and with not a care in the world. By the time the weekend was over Keith had nearly forgotten that Lance didn’t live there. He was grateful for the trip when it came time for them to part ways and insisted he could walk back to the beach by himself. Even laden with the gifts that Keith sent him away with (a nice blanket to make the motel stays nicer and some more books). He had a great deal to tell his family about, he said suggestively.

When Adam and Shiro returned, Shiro immediately noticed that Keith seemed “different”. He demanded to know what he had been up to. Keith refused to answer, and Adam saved the day by changing the subject and talking about their trip.

Keith had figured out, when talking to Lance, what had been bothering him. And so this time, when his brother talked about the baby, he smiled. And he meant it.


	7. An Ocean Open Before Us

After spending an entire weekend at Keith’s place, Lance seemed eager to repay him somehow. He said that Keith had allowed him into his home and that this, for his people, was a great honor. Even though they didn’t live in traditional houses. Lance laughed when Keith pointed that out and said that his concept of “home” was too small. Keith, admittedly, thought about that one for a while. 

In any case, Keith relented, as he always seemed to do when it came to Lance. Lance wanted to show Keith a piece of his home, he said, and he asked him to meet him on the beach after work.

“Bring your swim trunks,” he’d said, “and don’t be afraid. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

As ominous a statement as that was, Keith felt compelled to obey just so he could get some answers.

The day arrived. Keith stood on the edge of the dock in only his swimsuit. Lance had already seen him like that, so he wasn’t self-conscious. Lance looked up at him from the water, one hand outstretched.

“...Share your powers,” Keith said, stunned. He was only repeating what Lance had said to him. “You can make me a mermaid?”

“No, no. Nothing that grand,” Lance said with a dismissive wave of that hand. “But I can share my magic with you if you’ll let me. And then you can breathe and swim like I do.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“You said the same thing about my tail, did you not? Or the fact that I can, in fact, talk to dolphins?” Keith mulled that over, his mouth twisted downwards in his trademark pout. “I know you’re curious. I can show you the ocean as I see it. And I know that it might be scary for you, but I promise we won’t run into, you know. One of those things. And even if we did, it wouldn’t be so stupid as to attack ME.”

“What, will your oh-so-important royal family get it if it hurts you?”

“...Exactly that, actually.”

Keith groaned. Knowing Lance always seemed to test his patience. Or, at the very least, the limits of his understanding of the world.

He stared at Lance’s hand. At his calm smile, at his welcoming eyes. At the water. He was afraid, but he didn’t want to be afraid anymore. He was tired of it. Fear had stalled his life for so long now that he was just plain _tired_  of it. So he knelt down and took Lance’s hand, and he felt something surge through him. He’d felt something similar in the hospital after the attack, when they’d given him morphine for the pain. It was warm and radiated through his veins.

Keith didn’t remember getting into the water, but when he opened his eyes again, Lance was waiting for him. Still smiling. Everything was tinted blue. Keith looked around in disbelief. Normally, even if he did open his eyes under the water, his vision was strained. Blurry. This was as clear as day, as easy as seeing on land, and the water didn’t sting.

He opened his mouth, but was afraid to say anything for fear that his body would remember that it needed air. Lance laughed.

“Go ahead,” he coaxed. “Say something. You’ll be okay.”

“...This is weird.”

Lance giggled, but it _was_  weird for Keith. He could breathe. He could actually breathe, like there was an invisible air shield around him or something. Was he glowing? He felt like he must have been glowing.

“Come with me,” Lance implored, and he stretched out his hand again. This time, Keith didn’t hesitate in taking it. Lance took off, and Keith gave a little kick of his own. Lance didn’t need the help. He was a strong enough swimmer that he could easily drag Keith along with him. Keith needed only make sure he didn’t float off in a different direction or change his angle. Of _course_  Lance could guide him. He swam every day. He was made to swim. Trying to help Lance swim would be like offering painting tips to Picasso.

In only a couple of minutes, Keith could easily say he was the furthest underwater that he had ever been. He didn’t feel a change in pressure, but he watched Lance’s ear-fins twitch and adjust themselves as they got lower.

“How deep underwater do you live?” Keith asked.

“A few miles further out,” Lance answered casually. “There is still coral and seaweed, but we’re deep enough that the average diver stays away.Our village is in a trench.”

“Do you really see divers?”

“Occasionally. We hide and watch them from a distance. To make sure they aren’t harming the environment.”

Keith knew what Lance meant, unfortunately. Tourists would break off pieces of coral to take home as souvenirs sometimes. They didn’t understand that coral was technically alive and that doing that hurt it.

Lance stopped, suddenly, and turned to face Keith. It took him a moment to figure out how to stay upright. His body thought it would float upwards, like it normally did, and he had to fight his natural instincts.

“Are you cold?” Lance asked him. “Those divers wear those suits...”

“I’m... okay, actually. I hadn’t even thought of that. I feel, um. Tingly? And warm. Plenty warm.”

“Just let me know if you need anything. I, um...” Lance chuckled nervously. “I haven’t actually done this before.”

“You WHAT?”

“I-I know how it works! But as I said before, we... My kind haven’t trusted yours in quite some time. This was common practice once, but not so these days.”

Keith glared at Lance for a moment, but it quickly faded. Sure, maybe Lance should have been more upfront about the experimental nature of this little expedition, but Keith was fine. He could still breathe even though they were so deep underwater that he could hardly see the shape of the sunlight.

That afternoon, Lance showed Keith a world he had never seen before. When he knew where to look he could see signs of sentient life. Lance pointed out tools and dwellings, and Keith saw a couple of mer-children peeking at him from inside of their homes of rock and coral.

“They look scared,” Keith commented as he looked at a pair of wide eyes. Lance shrugged.

“They might be. But they know who I am.” Lance waved at the little spy that had stuck around to watch them. She blushed and pulled her head back until she was totally concealed. “It’s okay,” he shouted after her. “This is my friend!”

They waited. And then, to Keith’s surprise, the child came out from her hiding place and swam hesitantly over to them.

Lance, apparently, was not a normal mer-person. The child didn’t have the markings that Lance did and her tail was like that of a common fish. If Keith had only seen that, he would have assumed that she was a regular sea creature. But as average as she was, Lance lit up with recognition when she came out and took her hands in his.

“This is Mel,” Lance explained. “I know all of my people. My _constituents_ , as you would put it.”

“...Are you... going to be a king someday?” Keith asked. He couldn’t help the hollow sound of his voice, because the thought of that made him kind of sad. If Lance was a king he probably wouldn’t have time to visit random maintenance workers on the beach.

“Not me,” Lance denied. “Don’t worry. The king or queen will be one of my older siblings. I’m the baby of the family, like Mel here. We both have four older siblings!”

Keith properly directed his attention to the child. He wondered if she’d made her little “dress” herself, which seemed to be woven out of seaweed, or if it had been her idea toput seashells in her hair, or if that had been one of those older siblings. A doting sister, maybe. Mel was timid about shaking Keith’s hand and he wondered if it was the first time she’d ever met a human being.

“Keith,” he said, because that was all he could think to say to a mermaid child he didn’t know. She snickered at him.

“That is a silly name.”

“I’m sure it is.”

Mel smirked at Lance in the mischievous way that only small children could.

“He is pretty,” she said. Keith flushed with embarrassment. Not because he thought of that as an insult, because he wasn’t that insecure about his masculinity, but because he hadn’t expected something that blunt. Lance laughed. Kids were always blunt.

“I think so,” he agreed. “Do you want to help me? I’m showing my friend here what our home is like. Is there something you’d like to show him?”

Mel knew just the place. She took off like a bullet speeding through the water and it was all they could do to keep up. When at last she stopped, it was in the middle of what Keith would describe as an underwater forest. Coral and sponges, anemones andstarfish, kelp and seaweed formed a colorful ocean landscape where fish swam freely.

“It’s Nemo,” Keith muttered as he got as close as he could to a clownfish. Lance made a face at him. “Oh, it’s— it’s a movie.” Keith grinned. “Shiro cries every time we watch it. I think he relates to the protagonist too much.”

“Well, then, we’ll have to watch it sometime,” Lance replied with a smile that was a bit too presumptuous. He was already looking forward to their next weekend, it seemed. ...Keith was, too, but he would not say so. Not yet.

Lance stared at something Keith couldn’t see past him. He swam to his side and caught his beaming expression. A seahorse.

“Go ahead and put your hand out,” Lance instructed.

“I don’t know if they’ll do tricks like that for me—“

“It’ll do it if I’m here. Now put your hand out!”

Keith obeyed, Lance cooed something at the little guy, and the seahorse, as promised, wrapped it’s tail around his finger. He was sure his face looked ridiculous as he carefully stoked it with one finger, as both Mel and Lance were laughing at him.

As the trio were observing a number of fish, Keith heard something else approaching them. Another child, based on the speed. It was a boy this time who started shouting as soon as he was close enough. He came to an abrupt stop as soon as he saw Keith, all but hissing at him.

“It is okay,” Mel assured the other child. “He is a guest of Prince Lance.”

“What is it, Jack?” Lance asked. The kid was clearly upset about something and had gone straight for the prince once he saw him. Lance was a pretty casual monarch, Keith thought, but it was probably a good thing that his people assumed he would help them with whatever it was they needed.

“Why not ask HIM?” Jack said bitterly, glaring at Keith and pointing an accusatory finger. “They are the ones with all the plastic, right?”

“That is very presumptuous of you, young man! Keith here works actively to help clean up our waters and the beaches. I think you owe my friend an apology when this is done.”

Keith whistled. Lance knew when to crack down, and despite his appearance, he _was_  in charge. Jack looked irritated, but also guilty, and he wouldn’t meet Keith’s eyes.

“There is a baby,” he grumbled. “He got stuck in the plastic wrapping. He cannot get out.”

“What kind of baby?” Keith asked, trying to win the kid’s favor if he could. He was imagining a human baby bundled up in sticky wrap but was sure that wasn’t what Jack meant.

“A whale,” Jack answered, and Keith nearly choked. Lance nodded, his expression grim.

“Lead the way,” he commanded. “Keith is strong. He might be able to help us.”

Mel decided to tag along as Jack led them through the sea-forests and out into more open terrain. The trek took several long and grueling minutes of high-speed swimming. Keith would surely have tired out if not for Lance and Mel helping drag him along. Normally it would have been embarrassing that a little girl was such a strong swimmer compared to him, but she WAS a literal mermaid.

Sure enough, they came upon a whale calf. A humpback. It was drifting lazily, helplessly spinning around, its fins pinned in place by what was definitely plastic wrapping of some kind. It looked like the stuff Internet packages often came in. Which meant it was pretty sturdy.

He and Lance got to work as quickly as they could. Lance could talk to the calf, so he clicked and whistled, likely in some attempt to calm it down while it was being fussed over. The kids seemed afraid to breathe as they waited. Keith found himself getting more and more frustrated as they untangled the creature, even as it was working and the calf slowly regained its mobility. He was frustrated by the fact that it had happened in the first place. The calf was just a baby minding its own business. It had no control over the world around it. But he didn’t let that frustration distract him, and soon enough, the whole piece of plastic came away and the calf spun around, fins flapping wildly as it realized it was free.

“You did it! He is okay!” Mel cheered.

Jack’s expression softened, but quickly hardened back into a pout as he realized that it meant he would, in fact, have to apologize to Keith. Which, to his credit, he did, even if he wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“We should not just leave him here, though,” Jack said, changing the subject to avoid his own embarrassment. Keith honestly wasn’t mad at him. Hell, he felt for the kid. He’d been a troublesome child once, one that didn’t trust anyone or listen to authority figures, and Shiro had had to make him apologize to plenty of people. Usually teachers. “He should be with his mother.”

“You’re right,” Lance agreed as he affectionately stroked the animal’s side. Keith was visibly nervous about doing the same. Lance was used to doing this sort of thing and knew how to do so without harming the wildlife. The same was not necessarily true for Keith. “Let’s find your mom, shall we?”

Keith watched, amazed, as Lance had what seemed to be a short conversation with the calf. The children, according to Mel, could also speak this shared language, but weren’t “as good at it”. Once they had their directions, they followed the calf as it led the way. Lance made each of the kids take one of his hands so that they wouldn’t get lost, and Mel pulled Keith along with her despite his insistence that he could keep up by himself. He was glad she was so stubborn.

Like any human being, Keith knew that whales were big. But being beside a fully-grown one in its natural habitat was something else entirely. He suddenly felt tiny. Powerless, even. It was all he could do to keep from retreating in fright as the mother rapidly swam towards them, eagerly anticipating her reunion with her child. Lance, who had reclaimed his hand by then, felt him stiffen and laughed.

“She won’t hurt you,” he promised. “She’s just here for her baby.” Keith knew that Lance was right, but what was a tiny human like him to do in the face of such majesty?

The mother sang what sounded like a thankful song as soon as she had her calf again. Lance stroked her head and Keith followed suit. The kids waved as the little family swam away. It took Keith a while to catch up to conversation. He was still in a state of shock just from having seen the humpback up close. He wanted to tell Shiro about having touched it, but had no idea how to explain _any_  of this without having Shiro think he was insane. Even if he left out the mermaid children and their magical prince.

The water was getting darker by the minute as the sun above the surface dipped low. The kids asked Keith a bunch of questions (a thousand, probably) and poked and prodded at his feet (he had to explain that they were called toes and not foot fingers). He’d forgive their curiosity, seeing as they’d literally never seen a person, but Lance apologized on their behalf and told them not to grab at people without asking. Lance then led the way and guided them back to their “home”, which looked at a glance like a bunch of rocks. But, like Lance had said, “home” didn’t have to be a house.

By the time Keith and Lance were alone again, the sun had set. Just as Keith feared that they would be stranded in the darkness, Lance’s markings began to glow, and bright enough to illuminate their path.

“You’re sure you know the way back?” Keith asked. He couldn’t help his doubtful tone. And he didn’t want to betray how blown away he was by the glow. Lance turned just enough to wink at him.

“Of _course_  I do.” He paused. “...I told you you weren’t bad with kids. They both liked you.”

“I don’t know if mer-children count.”

“From my own observations thus far, I would have to say that they _do_  count. They seem similar to human children.” Lance laughed as he started to swim, pulling Keith behind him once more. “That whale calf certainly liked you, but you would accuse it of being biased under the circumstances, I’m sure.”

“So were the kids. They just wanted to touch my feet,” Keith chuckled.

“You may be right about that.”

“...Thank you. I’ve done a lot of thinking today.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

The trek across the water seemed longer on the way back than it had the first time. By the time he could see the shore again, Keith had started to wonder if Lance had gotten lost. But they arrived, and Keith noticed that his legs were heavy as he pulled himself ashore. He could feel Lance’s spell wearing off. Lance looked silly, honestly, flopping around on the sand, but Keith was sure he knew what he was doing.

“I set up a little spot for a fire,” Lance said over some kind of noise that Keith guessed was him transforming. “Why don’t you warm up while I get dressed? ...Don’t look at me for a minute. Cover your eyes.”

“What do you— OH.”

It was common human instinct to immediately look at something after being told not to look. Lance had asked Keith to turn away because, immediately after transforming and growing legs, he was completely naked. Keith did as he was told and mentally reprimanded himself for having looked in the first place. He waited until he could hear the crackling of the fire, and then waited a few moments more, before he dared turn around to look at it. Lance had retreated behind one of the rocks by then.

Keith thought that they could get in trouble, maybe, for the bonfire, but the beach wasn’t technically open to the public and Keith did have permission to work there, so he figured it was fine. It was unlikely that anyone would stop them at this hour anyway. He got comfortable on the towel that Lance had laid out and dried off and pulled on his t-shirt. Lance was next to him as soon as he was dressed and he draped another towel, one of those really long ones, around the both of them.

“...So,” Lance said, clearing his throat. “You said you’ve been thinking. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Keith sighed. “I’ve been thinking about the baby. I saw a bunch of kids today, human or not.”

“Ah. I should have figured.” Lance squeezed his shoulder just a little bit. “Are you coming around to the idea?”

“I-I don’t know that I’d go that far just yet, but I, uh. I think I’m gonna be okay. And not just because I have to be, you know?”

Lance didn’t press him to continue. He didn’t ask a question. He just looked at the fire, taking a glance back at him every once in a while, and waited for Keith to say it himself.

“...I kept thinking about his arm,” Keith said quietly. When they were this close together, he could almost feel Lance turning his head when he looked at him. “The prosthetic one. So I figured it must have had something to do with that, uh, incident. That that was what I was upset about. But that didn’t really make any sense.

“I’ve never really liked thinking about that, so I tried to get used to the idea of having a baby around. Tried imagining what it would be like. And I started wondering what Shiro would be like as a dad. And then suddenly all I can think about is— is the fact that some day, and maybe some day pretty soon, Shiro is gonna be looking after this, th-this _baby_. A whole... person. And he’s gonna watch this kid grow up and teach them right from wrong and protect them from _anything_  that would try to hurt them, just like—“

“Just like he’s done for you. Because he’s practically raised you, hasn’t he?”

“...Yeah. I already know what he’ll be like as a dad. He kinda had to replace ours. He didn’t really have a say in it, but he’s never once complained. ...That’s when I realized what the whole arm thing was about.”

When it came to Shiro, it wasn’t about the arm, or even about the attack. It was about what it _represented_. That at one time, he and Shiro had been all the other had in the world. Shiro had been willing to die for him. Would he do the same today? Keith would do it for him.

Keith remembered feeling similarly when Adam had joined the picture. He and Shiro had left their home country for Australia, and Shiro, ever brilliant and so celebrated even while he was still so young (as old as Keith was now), had started to meet the other scientists who would eventually become part of his little team. He’d decided to attend some athletic event with some of them and to meet with some of the swimmers for lunch afterwards. And then the next thing Keith knew, there was Adam. Keith had been fourteen at the time.

He hadn’t liked the man at first. But that had had nothing to do with him. Keith had been fearful of letting ANYONE into their tiny family. For so long it had been him and Shiro versus everyone else. Versus nature, even. And every moment that the two of them were alone together, off on their dates, was a moment that Shiro _didn’t_  spend with Keith. It had confused him, had made him mad, because suddenly he felt like his very identity was in crisis and he didn’t belong anywhere.

“I used to think that it had to be just the two of us. Like our bond wouldn’t be as strong if there was anybody else there. But I’ve... come to realize something, I guess.” Lance waited for Keith to finish as he stared at the rocks and cleared his throat. “...Adam. At first I didn’t like him. I tried to keep him out, but he stayed, and he reached out to me even when I was a brat. He knew I was important to Shiro and he wasn’t going to give up on me that easily. And now he’s... well, I like him. Scratch that— I love the guy.”

“And that hasn’t made you love your brother any less. Has it?”

“Nope. Not at all.” Keith smiled at Lance. In theory. It was pointed at the ground and he didn’t tilt his head enough to let Lance see it, but it was a smile FOR him, that existed for his sake, and he figured that was the same thing. “I think _maybe_  my heart‘s bigger than I used to think it was. ...But you didn’t hear that from me. Because that’s corny.”

“It is, but I won’t say anything if you don’t.”

It was another thing that Keith wasn’t quite ready to admit, but it wasn’t just Adam that had made him aware of all that extra space. He had been spending an awful lot of one-on-one time with Lance, away from his family, and Lance had stubbornly carved out a little space for himself. In Keith’s life, and in his heart. Which was, again, very corny, but he had been caring less and less about that lately.

“...I’ve been thinking about the ocean, too.” Lance perked up at that. “Maybe being an athlete isn’t right for me, but I do want to help my brother if I can, and... seeing it up close like that makes me remember why I loved it so much to begin with. And knowing it’s _your home_  that we’ve been destroying makes me feel a bit more compelled to help.” He smiled at Lance again, and he let him see it this time. “...It’s beautiful,” he said, and he hoped it was clear that he meant it. It must have been, because Lance’s face split open with a smile so wide and so genuine that it had to hurt.

“You’ve shown me so many incredible things on land that I figure we’re even.”

“I don’t know that we are, honestly.”

Lance did something he rarely did— he blushed. Keith couldn’t help but laugh at it. Lance liked to seem flirtatious, apparently. He was usually the one to try to get a rise out of Keith. Seeing him caught off guard like that was always, _always_  funny.

By the time they parted ways, Keith knew it was late and that Shiro would be agitated. As he’d guessed he would, he found his brother sitting at the kitchen table and drumming a rhythm on its surface. He frowned as soon Keith was in his line of sight and stood up.

“Where the hell have you been?! Do you know what time it is?!”

“He’s an adult, Takashi,” Adam called from somewhere nearby. Keith made a mental note to high-five him later.

“It’s late, I know. I should’ve called. But I was just spending time with a friend and we kind of lost track of time.”

“Do I know this friend?” Shiro’s scowl betrayed that he knew it was Lance. Keith just laughed at him. Shiro tried to be scary sometimes, but he and Keith both knew he was mostly harmless. And Keith understood why he got so protective considering what they had both been through. 

Keith didn’t answer his brother’s question. He just wandered over to his side and pulled him into a quick but firm hug. Shiro was so bewildered by this that he didn’t protest.

“What—“

“Thanks for looking out,” Keith called over his shoulder as he retreated to his bedroom. Shiro didn’t pursue him, but Keith did hear Adam say something to him in a teasing tone from wherever he’d been hiding.

Keith fell asleep, for the first time in a while, with a smile on his face. 


	8. Reflections that Ripple

As the air got cooler with the approach of fall, Keith found himself thinking a lot. Something about the changing landscape and the breeze had always had that effect on him. He wasn’t thinking about the baby all the time like he had been before. No— he was thinking about Lance, about the ocean. 

It was Keith’s idea, actually. To introduce Lance to Shiro. To introduce him _properly_ and to tell him the truth. And Lance immediately thought it was a good idea. Shiro was about the best candidate Lance could have found for a merfolk-human ambassador. He was already devoted to cleaning up the oceans, so it wasn’t like he needed convincing. 

“To be honest, I’ve been eager to freak someone else out ever since I saw your face that day on the beach,” Lance admitted, his tone teasing. He was in Keith’s bathtub, fiddling with the water temperature. His tail hung over the edge despite how spacious said tub was. Keith sat on a stool beside him and looked through his various bottles of salt and bubbles. He wanted to start with something that was gentle on the skin. Lance had mentioned his sensitivity to chlorine and other chemicals Keith didn’t want to harm him. 

“You are a cruel, cruel man,” Keith deadpanned back. But, honestly, he understood that feeling. He personally couldn’t wait to see the look on Shiro’s face when they surprised him. 

Lance had a grand time experiencing a “fancy human spa bath”. He assured Keith that nothing in the water had stung and he didn’t have a rash afterwards. Keith lounged around in his bedroom while he waited for Lance to get dressed and to dry off. And then, as they left, the second-worst possible thing happened. 

“Keith, who’s that? Hey— hey, stop!”

“ _Scram_ ,” Keith commanded under his breath. They had discussed what to do in the event that Adam or Shiro got home early during one of their meet-ups. Lance ran for the back door and was gone before anyone could have stopped him. He ran surprisingly fast for a merman. Maybe that was just his long legs. 

Keith turned, slowly, to face his brother-in-law. Adam had his arms crossed and glared at him through his glasses. 

“Since when do you sneak boys in here?”

“I didn’t sneak anyone in. You said it yourself. I’m an adult.”

“Then why make him run away?”

Keith felt his face get hot. He couldn’t meet Adam’s gaze, so he glared at his shoes. 

“...I thought Shiro might have been with you. I don’t need an interrogation.”

“I see.” Adam peered down the hallway as if Lance would reappear. “That was Lance, I assume.”

“Yeah.” Keith should have figured that Shiro had mentioned Lance to Adam. He’d told Allura about it. 

“And what did you guys do?”

“We just, uh, watched a movie.” Keith didn’t know how to innocently explain the bath without having to explain the whole TAIL thing. Lance hadn’t technically been naked. Not in a human sense. And it wasn’t like Keith had gotten in there with him. 

“Whatever you say. But, look. If it’s really that important to you, I didn’t see anything. Okay?”

Keith breathed a sigh of relief. 

“...Thanks, Adam.”

Adam was true to his word, and he didn’t tell Shiro about seeing Lance’s visit. But he did tease Keith about it whenever they were alone. He’d ask “how things were going”, or ask if they’d “watched any more movies lately” with a subtle wink or an upward twist in the corner of his mouth. No matter how hard he denied it, no one ever seemed to believe Keith when he insisted that it wasn’t like that. 

Keith didn’t let that distract him. He had to plan things with Lance, of course. His big debut. Keith called Shiro one night and confirmed that he planned to stay late at the lab, just him and Allura and a couple of his other right-hand employees. He asked if Shiro would mind meeting with him to discuss something, and he said he’d find the time if it was something important. They agreed to a time and that was that. Keith called Lance. 

Lance showed up, as promised, with an inflatable kiddie pool, a towel, and a bucket. He was wearing jewelry Keith had never seen on him before. A circlet and some armbands. 

“What’s with the bling?” He asked, squinting at the pieces and determining that they were made of real gold and encrusted with those sea-colored gemstones that Lance used for currency. Lance grinned, and his teeth looked like he’d taken the time to whiten them. They practically sparkled. 

“I AM royalty, remember? I have to make a good impression.”

“You weren’t wearing that stuff when you met me for the first time.”

“I was trying to blend in back then. Now I’m meeting your brother as an official representative of my people.” 

“If that’s what you want to call it.”

They were so excited that they decided to walk, if only to work off some nervous energy. Lance talked the whole time. One of the workers let Keith into the building because he recognized him. Shiro had been told that Keith would be bringing a friend along. Lance gave him a nod that assured Keith he remembered his part of the plan and he took off, headed for the room that Keith had described to him earlier. 

Keith found Shiro by himself in a cramped office. He’d taken one of the smaller ones voluntarily. His desk was covered in papers and maps of the sea floor, and his hair was slightly frizzy, like he’d been wringing his hands through it. Keith felt a little bad about interrupting him in that kind of state, but maybe the news Keith was about to drop on him would cheer him up. It would certainly shake up his world a little bit. Keith hadn’t been the same since learning the truth about Lance and he knew he never would be. 

He rapped his knuckles against the doorframe to get Shiro’s attention. 

“Hey,” he said. Shiro jolted somewhat before he smiled. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything too important.”

“I’ve always got time for my little brother,” Shiro insisted. He set his reading glasses and the papers he’d been looking at down. “What do you need?”

Keith sat down in a chair across from Shiro— a cheap plastic one that had been in the corner. He suspected that Shiro kept it there for when Adam stopped by during the day. 

“...So you remember my friend Lance,” he began awkwardly. Shiro’s expression curdled slightly at the thought of him. 

“I do remember him dragging your unconscious body here, yes.” 

“I told you he didn’t do anything. And, look— the two of you sort of got off on the wrong foot, right? Because of that whole thing. And I feel like that wasn’t fair to Lance. I think you should give him a second chance and meet him properly this time.” 

“Properly? What, is he going to ask me for your hand in marriage?”

“What? No, nothing like that.” _Not yet, anyway_ , Keith thought to himself somewhat bitterly. “He just wants a chance to explain himself.”

“To explain what you two have been up to all this time.”

Keith laughed nervously. 

“...Yes. That. And I can swear that it’s not what you’re thinking.” 

Shiro sighed and raked a hand through his hair.

“You two really think I’m oblivious, don’t you? You think I don’t know you’ve been seeing him every time you give me some vague excuse? That I don’t know you’ve been having him over?” Keith blushed and started to open his mouth to explain, but Shiro interrupted him. “I’m not mad. Really. I have no right to tell you who to see and when to see them. I just.... wish you felt like you could tell me about these things.”

Keith shook his head, smiling a knowing smile. 

“I do trust you. I’m sorry if you got a different idea. Lance and I had our reasons for being so secretive. _Trust me_ , you’ll understand.” As if he’d timed it perfectly, Keith just then got the text from Lance that confirmed he was finished setting up and was ready for Shiro to come and find him. “...I don’t really know how to explain it, and you won’t believe me unless you see it for yourself, so you should really just come with me.”

Keith abruptly got up and ran out into the hallway. Shiro’s eyebrows raised, but he stood and followed Keith anyway. His curiosity had probably gotten the better of him. His brow furrowed into a mess of wrinkles when he saw Keith’s little setup. Lance waited in the empty office room, the one they used for meetings, standing in a kiddie pool full of water and wearing nothing but the towel that he’d pinned around his waist. 

“Speak of the devil,” Shiro almost grumbled. Lance laughed. 

“Yes, it’s me. But enough about that— I’m told that you are a man of science with a vested interest in ocean conservation. Is this true?”

Shiro folded his arms. His interest had been piqued. 

“That’s right. Do you have some kind of service to offer us, or...?”

“Something like that. Watch!”

Lance didn’t have much of a sense of dramatic anticipation, apparently, because he just... _did it_ , right then and there. He transformed. No drumroll, no buildup, nothing. The towel flew up and he managed to catch it before it plopped into the pool water, tossing it to one side. The pool was too small. A decent portion of Lance’s tail hung out. 

No one said anything for a painfully long minute or two. 

“...What the hell just happened?” Shiro asked. 

Keith suppressed a laugh, which, to his horror, resulting in an unattractive snort. 

“Lance did his little, uh, transforming trick for you. He’s a merman, see?”

“...Keith, I don’t have time for this.” 

“We’re not messing with you!”

“You can touch my tail if you’d like,” Lance invited. “Or I can transform back. I’d be naked, though. That’s just the way it works.” 

Keith and Lance both tried to explain everything to Shiro for another couple of minutes. But he wasn’t listening. Or, rather, his brain had stopped working, and Keith couldn’t fault him for that seeing as his entire body had stopped functioning when he’d seen Lance’s tail for the first time. 

Keith stood and tried to block his brother’s path as he ran for the door and threw it open. 

“I-I know this is hard to process—”

“ALLURA!” Shiro bellowed down the hall. Keith tried to shout her down before she could arrive, to assure her that her assistance wasn’t needed, but she was both in the room and screaming before he could do anything about it. 

Allura nearly fainted. She pulled up a chair for herself and took several minutes to calm down. Shiro was in some sort of ball on the floor, staring at the kiddie pool as Lance swished his tailfin around as if to prove that it was real. Lance cleared his throat. 

“This isn’t a very formal welcome,” he chuckled. “I’m royalty, I’ll have you know.”

“Underwater?” Shiro’s voice was so hollow, so exhausted, that Keith couldn’t help but laugh. 

“Yes, underwater. I am a prince!”

“And what does an underwater mermaid prince want with my brother?”

Lance smiled warmly at Keith, who smirked back at him. 

“He was the first human I encountered. Ever since we met he’s been educating me on your people and your culture. He gave me my first pair of socks, helped me acquire my cellular phone, signed me up for a library card— he has been a tremendous help and my people owe him a great debt. One that I may very well never be able to repay.” 

_I already told you that we’re even_ , Keith thought, frowning. Lance didn’t owe him a damn thing. His company and his kindness had been payment enough. 

Once Shiro had calmed down and accepted Lance as a reality, they got to talking. Shiro was very apologetic about the human toll on the environment, and Lance assured him that Shiro had no need to apologize because he was trying to fix it. Shiro agreed to be an “ambassador” and to consult Lance about what his people needed before beginning any ocean projects. Lance, in return, would put in a good word for Shiro and his crew, and maybe then the merfolk would be willing to help where they could. 

“I wish we could go public with this,” Shiro sighed. “I’m sure people would be more willing to help and more conscious of their actions if they knew there were people living in the sea.”

“That may be, but people would ALSO swarm their homes to exploit them for pictures, or try to capture them to make money,” Keith warned. “Not to mention most people would think it was a hoax anyway. I know I thought it had to be some kind of prank at first.” He still felt that way sometimes. He often had to pinch himself to remember that Lance, in all of his fishy glory, was real. 

Shiro and Lance shook hands on their arrangement, and Allura introduced herself properly and said she was eager to begin working together with the mer-people. They both left to allow Lance to grow legs again and get dressed. Keith stayed behind, but faced the corner to allow him some privacy. 

“I have to thank you again for your help,” Lance said as he touched Keith’s shoulder. Keith took that as permission to turn back around. “I was afraid he wasn’t going to believe me for a little while there, but I feel it went about as well as it could have. Your brother is a good man.”

“He is,” Keith agreed with a smile. 

Keith helped Lance empty the kiddie pool of both water and air and wipe up the water that had spilled onto the floor. He offered to take the towel home to wash and dry it, but Lance insisted he had everything covered. They parted ways for a little while so that Lance could put his things away, and then they reunited on the boardwalk. It was dark out by then. Most places were closed, and very few people still walked the streets. Keith leaned against the wooden fencing and waited for Lance. 

“What are you thinking about?” He asked as soon as he appeared. Keith didn’t look up at him right away. He studied the hazy image of himself that he could see in the water and found that his own face was gentler than he remembered it being. His scar didn’t stand out as an ugly blemish anymore, and he didn’t glare at it. 

“You,” Keith admitted. He had half a mind to run away as soon as he had, but it was too late. Lance was already very interested and got as close to his side as he could, starting intently at him. 

“Oh?”

“Well, yeah. I was just thinking— it’s funny, I guess. That you keep saying you’re thankful for me and wanna repay me somehow. It’s funny because I could say the same to you.”

“I already told you—“

“I’m not talking about the ocean. Or sightseeing or any of that stuff. I-I mean...” Keith had to look at his reflection again, at the way that it changed with the movement of the water, to determine exactly what he did mean. “I’ve... changed. Since meeting you. Not a whole lot, but still. It’s not like you magically fixed everything, but you made me realize that things... aren’t so bad, I guess. You helped me figure out what was already there. What I had in me. And, y’know... I like me.”

Lance wrapped an arm around Keith and gave him a gentle squeeze. 

“That’s good! I like you too.”

“Oh, trust me, I know. You’ve made that pretty clear.” 

They laughed together, the sound of it light and casual. Keith felt more and more at ease these days. Even when having Lance this close made his heart race a little. He’d been thinking about that most of all these days— how much he really liked Lance. He wasn’t ready to admit it just yet, but maybe soon. Keith hoped it would be soon. 

Lance walked Keith back to his house with his hand tangled in his, his fingertips brushing quiet affections across his knuckles and into his palm. And just like that, the hand-holding became another part of their effortless routine. Neither one said anything about it, but each time, they held on a little bit tighter and it was a little bit harder to let go. 


	9. Love Does Not Care About Limits

Shiro adjusted to his newly acquired knowledge about merfolk surprisingly quickly. Adam, too, once Lance had ruled that it was alright for Shiro to tell his staff and his husband about him. Shiro’s open suspicion of Lance faded almost overnight, as he decided that Keith had been perfectly reasonable when he’d decided to keep certain things about their relationship quiet. 

With that in mind, it became somewhat commonplace for Lance to spend the day (or the night) over if Adam and Shiro were going somewhere. Keith no longer feared the questions that would follow if they found evidence of another man’s presence. Hell, Shiro actually liked Lance once he got to know him. Lance spent more than a few afternoons in the laboratory, waiting patiently as Shiro’s scientists stuck little electrodes and things to his skin and jotted down complicated results in the form of numbers and wavelengths that Keith didn’t understand.

It was one of those quiet nights. Keith had the place to himself. Kosmo had turned in for the night. Lance had wanted to see a certain movie that Keith had mentioned— _Finding Nemo_ , of all things, and as expected, Lance cried. At a lot of the same parts that Shiro always did. Lance cuddled up against his side as they watched, and he joked around with Keith about how personally he could relate to the frightening nature of the shark chase. He talked about the movie for what felt like an hour after they had finished watching it. He appreciated, apparently, that humans made movies about talking animals. Merfolk, he explained, had a tendency to assume that humans couldn’t relate to or sympathize with sea creatures at all. Keith grimaced at that— no amount of talking fish in movies had stopped overfishing and pollution just yet.

Keith could have scooted over, could have maintained his personal bubble if he had wanted to. He didn’t. He normally wasn’t one to let people touch him. Lance probably would have been surprised to hear it, seeing as they’d been holding hands when they walked for what was likely a couple of weeks now, maybe even a month. Allura had seen them like that once (a moment he would never live down) and Keith could have sworn that she was going to cry— only a short while ago, he’d been so nervous about what people would think of him that he hadn’t been on a date in over a year. Now he snuggled up against Lance and let him touch his face, his hands, even his waist a couple of times. And it was nice. He wasn’t sure what he’d been so afraid of.

They did part eventually. Keith stood up to stretch and yawn as soon as the ending credit roll had finished. By then, it was somewhat late, about the time that they both could have gone to bed, but they were restless. Lance suggested going for a swim in the pool and Keith took him up on that. Halfway, anyway. He picked a mood-music playlist from his phone and set up the “floating island” once more, and he swam around for only a little while before he crashed there, stretching out his limbs and taking in the sight of the canopy of stars above them through the glass ceiling panels.

For a while, they talked about nothing extraordinary. There was good news— Adam and Shiro had gotten their approval and were officially on the waiting list, and now they only had to wait until they were chosen. Lance had talked to his family about his progress and they were excited and optimistic about the future. His oldest sister had even expressed an interest in coming ashore. Lance explained that he was the only member of his family so far that had set foot on land. The rest had been too afraid. But Lance had a heart for adventure and for exploration and loved meeting new people, so it was no surprise at all that he had been the one to insist, to first break through that barrier.

Keith said something about thinking that it might be nice to meet Lance’s siblings. Normally he would have feigned disinterest— or, that’s what he might have done a year ago, anyway— or said something less direct, but he was tired. He didn’t have the energy to put on a front. And that was when there was a moment of silence. One that lasted a bit too long.

“...Hey, Keith?” Lance called, all of a sudden, from the end of the floatie. His voice was uncharacteristically timid. Keith sat up to make room for him and watched, trying not to laugh, as Lance pulled himself up. He had an awkward time of it and the plastic squeaked in protest under his arms and the full extent of his tail didn’t quite fit on board. The fin dangled over one side as he pulled himself up until he was more or less seated beside Keith.

He had a sinking feeling, somewhere in the back of his mind, that this would be THAT conversation. That confusing one that always had to come up eventually, full of questions like “what are we?” and “where is this going?”. Keith dreaded those conversations. He hated them. He hated them because he never had any answers, because he always felt uncertain about finicky, unnecessary, troublesome things like love. He was always waiting for the catch, he guessed. For the part where he’d inevitably mess up and lose somebody again. And so he had always taken that conversation, that question, as his cue to run. Because it meant that he had something precious to lose.

“Yes?” Keith asked, maintaining an intentionally neutral expression. Lance was a bit red in the face. Keith had to admit that it was nice to not be the flustered one for once. Lance always seemed one step ahead of him when it came to throwing Keith off of his game.

“I just—“ Lance couldn’t seem to think of what to say or how to say it. He took Keith’s hand in his. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m proud of you.”

Keith blinked. That wasn’t what he’d been expecting. Not at all.

“...For what?”

“For everything!” Lance shook his head as if Keith had said something silly. “For teaching me, for confiding in me, for getting stronger, being happier— all of it. You’ve worked hard.”

“Yeah, well,” Keith sputtered, immediately losing his edge. “I try.”

Lance laughed, rubbing an affectionate circle into Keith’s hand with his thumb.

“I know you do. And you may think it’s absurd of me, but I happen to feel that it was fate, you know. The fact that I just so happened to venture ashore on your beach, on a day when you just so happened to be working? It couldn’t be a coincidence. O-Or, it could be, but I choose to believe in something grander than that. That the ocean guided me to you. And you to me. It does things like that.”

Keith didn’t meet his eyes, but did smile.

“That’s... sappy.”

Lance laughed again, thankfully, and louder this time.

“It is!” Lance’s smile faded. He didn’t look unhappy— far from it— but something in his expression was resolved and serious enough that Keith didn’t dare interrupt him. “Listen,” he said, his voice soft. Keith listened. A bit more intently than he wanted to admit. “I know I haven’t exactly been subtle about this, and that it shouldn’t come as any surprise, even to someone as emotionally oblivious as you are, but I _do_ like you. I like you a lot.”

“Well, yeah,” Keith agreed, and he didn’t even bother to argue with that “emotionally oblivious” dig, because he deserved that. “I know, but—“

“That’s what I would have said about a month or two ago, anyway,” Lance continued, startling Keith into silence. “But now... now I’m afraid that it’s a bit more serious than that. And that it would seem that, somewhere along the line, I went and fell in love with you.”

Keith’s heart stopped for a moment, and then it pounded so hard that he was afraid Lance could hear it. It threatened to rise up into his throat and choke him.

“That’s, um... I...”

“I know, I know.” Lance chuckled. His face was rosy now. Even a guy who pretended to be as smooth as him got a little flustered during a confession of this magnitude, Keith guessed. “It’s... not exactly ideal. I know that there are barriers between us, what with my living underwater and my duties to my people and you already having a family here on land, a family that’s going to grow soon, and your own future to decide, not to mention the physical impracticalities that would make it hard to have a typical relationship, and I know that this is probably not what you were picturing when you dreamt about this sort of thing as a child, but I— I _love you_ , Keith. I would do whatever I have to to be with you, to make you happy. And you know that, don’t you? I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“... _Why_ , though?”

That was all Keith could think to ask. He didn’t know how to respond to any of the rest of it, to the wonderful things that Lance had said, because they didn’t seem real. He felt like he must have fallen asleep without realizing it and that he was having some silly dream. Not to mention the fact that Lance was beautiful and bright and a literal ocean prince.

Lance had assumed Keith had dreamt of a human husband, but that wasn’t true. Embarrassingly enough, he’d dreamed of something just like this back then. A boy that he could love in the same way that he loved the ocean. A mer-prince of his own. He just hadn’t expected to find something like that. Who would?

That dream, like his dreams of being a world-famous surfer, had long ago been cast into the sand and forgotten. Buried. And here Lance was, digging them back up, making Keith feel vulnerable in ways that he hadn’t since he was a little boy, feeling things he’d never thought he could. In that moment, he felt his face heating up as Lance clicked his tongue at him.

“Why? ...WHY? I’ll tell you why!” Keith briefly contemplated flinging himself into the water. He wasn’t good at receiving compliments. Never had been. He’d never been on the receiving end of this kind of declaration and he just knew it would be awkward, that _he_ would be awkward. But Lance seized his other hand, cupping them both in his. “I love your little quips, first of all.” Keith scoffed. “Really, I do. You’re quick-witted and you’re honest and you’re funnier than you give yourself credit for, and bantering with you is fun.”

“If you say so.”

Keith risked glancing upwards for just a second, catching a glimpse of Lance’s face, which had gotten closer to his, through his lashes. Even through that dark filter, he could see the sincerity there. His features had all but melted.

“But it’s more than that. You‘re also diligent, and you’re brave, and you have such a big heart for your family. For your loved ones, and for the planet despite the way you’ve been hurt.” Lance smirked. “And you’re so wonderfully stubborn. You have strong convictions and your heart is always in the right place. Even when you want to keep to yourself, even when you try to hide it, you always want what’s best for people. ...Honestly, the fact that you’re so gorgeous is just a bonus.”

“Lance—”

“I love _everything about you_ , Keith. I mean that even if you don’t believe me, and I couldn’t blame you if you didn’t. And I want to be with you, but... i-if you say no, I won’t bring it up again. I’ll leave you be. But I have to say this, to get it off my chest before I let you slip away from me!” His grip on Keith’s hands tightened, and Keith finally looked up at him. “Because I know you’ve noticed it. I feel it when you hold my hand, when you look at me. You... feel the same way, right? You don’t have to be afraid. I’ll take good care of you! I would never mess this up, because, because you and I, we...”

Keith waited a moment.

“...Yeah?” He prompted, recoiling at the way that his voice cracked.

Lance pretended to be contemplating something serious before he grinned, almost maliciously, and Keith dreaded whatever ridiculous thing was about to come out of his mouth.

“...We _mer-maid_ for each other.” Lance’s teeth practically sparkled. Keith groaned and rolled his eyes.

“Oh, shut up!”

Keith hid his smile and hid the redness of his face, embarrassed if only on Lance’s behalf (seriously, what kind of a thing was that to say at a time like this?). He pulled his hands out of Lance’s, and then he pushed him overboard with a playful but too-firm shove to his chest. Lance yelped as he fell, and Keith feared he’d pushed too hard and that Lance would be mad, and that he’d just ruined everything, but before he could say anything he realized that Lance weighed more than he appeared to. The whole structure dipped with him and threw Keith into the water right after him.

The whole thing took only a few seconds. Keith opened his eyes when he felt something akin to a jolt of electricity. When he looked up, Lance was right there. Not angry. Still pink in the face. Still grinning and gleeful.

“Are you okay?!” Lance asked, though Keith could hardly understand him through the laughter. Keith registered what had just happened. Lance had performed his little trick again. Keith knew this because he was breathing, breathing underwater even with Lance’s grip on his arms holding him down and preventing him from floating back to the surface. Everything was blue, save for the trickle of silver leaking down from the moonlight, and Lance’s markings ever-so-faintly glowed, and Keith had to admit it— it was a pretty romantic setting. Romantic enough to influence his decisions, even.

Keith smiled. He smiled so wide that his eyes crinkled and a barely-there dimple formed in his cheek. He didn’t hide it this time.

“Yeah.”

Keith normally wasn’t bold about this kind of thing. He was rarely the one to initiate anything at all, even if it was something as small as a hug. But Lance had done a lot of work that evening already. He’d bared his whole heart. The entirety of his soul. Keith was still learning to do those things, and so he didn’t have anything wonderful to say in that moment, not anything like the things that Lance had said. He opted for action instead, placing his hands on Lance’s shoulders and pulling himself closer, close enough that there was no longer any space between them, close enough that their noses brushed together, and kissed him.

Lance didn’t react right away. He was probably startled. But soon enough his eyes closed and his hands were on Keith’s back and in his hair. Careful hands, almost like he thought he would hurt Keith if he held on any tighter. Maybe he thought humans were delicate compared to merfolk. Or he was nervous. Whatever it was, whatever the reason, that tenderness was endearing.

And just like that, Keith felt a bit more complete than he had in a long while. Not like he’d suddenly found what he’d been missing all his life, because Keith already knew who he was, and so did Lance. Even so, he was filled with a feeling of wholeness. Like one had expanded into two, or like the shape of his life had just changed and wouldn’t go back to the way it was ever again, and that it was a good thing that didn’t scare him anymore. Because he believed Lance. He believed him and he felt the same way.

“ _Ow!_ ”

The moment, as beautiful as it had been, was interrupted by a sharp pain. Keith pulled back and put a hand over his mouth. Lance’s face flushed with color.

“Did I hurt you?” His hands twitched and he glared at them for a moment. He did, apparently, have some idea that humans were fragile. Keith shook his head. He’d ask later where Lance had gotten that idea.

“No, it’s not _that_ , you— why do you have such sharp teeth?!”

“Are yours not like that?”

“No!”

“Oh.” Lance laughed nervously. “...Come to think of it, they feel different when I have legs. I guess I hadn’t thought—”

“You didn’t answer my question!”

“We... we have to eat fish. If they weren’t sharp, we’d probably starve to death.” He was smirking now, and he swam towards Keith and cupped one side of his face. “Really, are you okay?”

Keith grumbled under his breath for a second or two, feeling a bit silly even if he wasn’t exactly _humiliated_. It was his fault, really, for getting a little carried away. He’d tried to escalate things and now his tongue was bleeding. Just a little. Lance apologized and Keith waved it off.

Time passed. They got out of the pool, and Lance grew legs and ran off just long enough to throw on trunks and grab some towels. Keith sat on the poolside tile and waited. Lance practically slid across the floor until he was kneeling in front of him and started drying him off. Keith just laughed. He’d let him do whatever he wanted for now, but he was pretty sure that Lance just wanted an excuse to touch him again. As if he needed one.

“...Are you sure?” Lance asked out of nowhere. Keith peered at him through the towel that Lance was working through his thick mop of hair.

“About what?”

“You know. This. _Us_.” Keith rolled his eyes and sighed. Lance shook his head. “N-No, I mean, I know that you wouldn’t have accepted if you didn’t at least like me back, but... like I said, there are impracticalities.”

“Such as?”

“Well, you know, I-I...” Lance was getting unusually flustered. “I may LOOK like a convincing enough human man with the legs and all, but I’m not human, s-so certain things might not work the same way.” It finally hit Keith— what it was that Lance was trying to explain— in one big old slap of information that made him say “oh” if only in his own head. “And I can do without! I would be perfectly fine with that as long as we could still cuddle and do other things, but I wouldn’t want to ask you to—”

“Lance, I don’t care about that,” Keith snickered.

“...What? Really?”

“Really. It doesn’t matter to me. I’ve never really cared about it. It’s... why certain people broke up with me, actually. They thought it meant I wasn’t really interested in them. And I tried to explain that it didn’t have anything to do with them, but... I guess we just weren’t the right fit.” He shrugged. Lance breathed an exaggerated sigh of relief.

“Oh, thank GOD.” 

They laughed, and then they kissed again. If Keith hadn’t done it right the first time, he did then. He didn’t cut himself the second time, at least, even when Lance’s tongue met his and their bodies pressed together and Lance’s fingers threatened to bruise him for how tightly he held on. This time, Lance broke the kiss just to look at him, and Keith found himself smiling like some kind of goofy idiot, but somehow didn’t feel inclined to hide his face this time.

After all that, Keith didn’t have the heart to send Lance back home. Or even to condemn him to a guest room. Lance was as clingy, physically, as Keith had suspected he would be, but when it came time to sleep he was surprisingly polite. Keith had imagined him sprawled across the whole mattress, but Lance slept in a straight line, leaving Keith plenty of room, and didn’t move much once he’d settled. Keith felt an overwhelming relief that swelled in his chest as they held one another and as he drifted off with his head against Lance’s slowly rising chest— Lance had peppered kisses across his shoulders and his neck, and his hands had brushed the bare skin that was exposed by Keith’s loose-fitting shirt, but nothing more. Lance really didn’t expect anything more from him.

Keith had planned to wake up early enough to get Lance out of the house before Shiro knew anything had happened. He’d set his alarm and everything. Apparently, he woke just long enough to punch the snooze button and go right back to sleep. He was properly woken by someone throwing open the curtains that had previously restrained the blinding sunlight. Keith hissed and dove under the covers.

“Somebody slept well,” Adam’s voice said. Keith didn’t have to look at him to know that he was wearing a very obnoxious grin, and that he was likely making that face because Lance was still there. Keith could feel his weight and his warmth. “It’s late. I brought you something for breakfast. I set it on the—”

“Nothing happened!”

“...I didn’t say anything. Just thought you’d want to get up while it was still light out. Also, it’s been a while. It’s not like he’s some shady stranger that you snuck in without permission. And besides that, you’re both adults and it’s none of my business.”

Keith waited for Adam to make some kind of joke or say that he was kidding. But he didn’t, so he hesitantly pulled the blanket down until it no longer hid his head. Adam was standing near the nightstand, and he had, in fact, set some napkins and a plate full of breakfast pastries there on a little silver tray. The kind of thing one could eat in bed without the need of utensils.

“Thanks, Adam,” Keith yawned once he’d sat up. “Really, though, nothing happened. ...Or, not _nothing_ , but it’s not what it looks like.”

“Are the two of you an item now?”

Keith smiled.

“I guess so.” Without bothering to turn to look at him, Keith reached around until his fingers found Lance’s hair and laced themselves there. “He actually said he loves me. Can you believe that?”

“I can, actually. And don’t look so smug. It’s so obvious that you’re smitten with him that even Shiro can tell.”

That one actually caught Keith off guard and got him laughing.

“What do you mean, ‘even Shiro’?!”

“Oh, you know _exactly_ what I mean. Back before we were going out I was dropping hints left and right and he never caught on. I had to practically beat him over the head with it.”

“But you never thought to just ask him yourself!”

“...That’s fair.” The three of them were a family of idiots when it came to romance. Adam chuckled fondly as he reflected on that, on the early days, long before he’d become a married man with a kid on the way, before he turned to leave and give Keith and his new mer-boyfriend some privacy. “Oh, by the way,” Adam half-shouted from the doorway, “Lance is looking a little pale. You might want to check on him.”

Keith, still a bit groggy even after that bit of conversation, blinked as Adam closed the door behind him. He had no idea what Adam was referring to until he turned to nudge the merman awake, and as soon as he did, the source of Adam’s concern was readily apparent. Keith was then 150% awake and began to shake Lance, yelling his name at least six times. 

“What? What?!” Lance grumbled, half-laughing. “What, is there a fire?”

“You’re all grey! What happened to you?! Get up!”

He wasn’t _literally_ grey, but his skin tone was usually a warm one that was noticeably darker than Keith’s, and that had changed overnight. Lance’s skin had turned cool-toned and he’d lightened a shade or two. The contrast made him look sickly.

“Oh. That.” Lance yawned. “I’m fine. Just happens in the mornings because I’ve been dry for so long. Legs or not, I AM primarily aquatic.”

“Go— Jesus _Christ_ , go get in the tub!”

“Nuh-uh. I wanna snuggle.” 

“Not when you look like that! It’s freaking me out!”

Lance, true to form, had to be as big of a pain in the ass about it as possible. He absolutely refused to go take a bath and rehydrate until he was allowed to feed Keith a piece of donut, arguing that it was what couples did. Keith was sure that Lance just wanted to get him to blush, and if that was his plan, it worked. Keith was bright red as he let Lance feed him one single piece of the pastry, and as soon as he’d swallowed he practically threw Lance off of the mattress. Lance laughed victoriously all the way to the bathroom.

As soon as he’d recovered, Keith took a shower in the guest room and grabbed a couple of glasses of iced tea from the kitchen. He tried to escape quickly, in time to avoid Shiro, but failed and had to endure a bit of big-brother teasing before he got back. At first, he wanted nothing more than to run to the opposite end of the earth. But after the required jabs were out of the way, it became obvious that Shiro was actually really, really happy for him. And that felt nice. Shiro promised to leave Keith alone for the morning and then walked away to do just that. 

Keith returned to his bedroom and found there, waiting for him, a clean and hydrated Lance, who greeted him with a chaste smooch as soon as he was close enough. He thanked him for bringing him something to drink and set the tray down where they could both reach it, and Keith stayed mostly quiet save for the occasional nod or grunt as Lance went on and on about how excited he was. Keith analyzed the fact that things didn’t feel all _that_ different, and that maybe that was a good thing.

Keith had been afraid, not so long ago, that if he admitted how he felt things would change so much that Lance wouldn’t recognize him anymore and wouldn’t want to be near him once that happened. Instead, it was a comfortable but otherwise uneventful morning, and he felt relaxed. Maybe he could get used to this— the wholesome domestic bliss thing. Maybe this was what Adam and Shiro had behind closed doors. Maybe Keith had been looking for the wrong things in the wrong places before now.

“That Italian place might be nice. You had a lot of fun there. Or maybe the aquarium?” Lance speculated aloud about where they should have their first real date. Keith shrugged.

“I don’t think that’s the part that matters.”

“Maybe not, but I want it to be special. Don’t you?”

“I already know it’ll be special.”

Keith didn’t look up all the way as he said that. He played with the ends of an unused napkin, tearing the edges into little strips of paper. He just barely saw Lance make that funny face with one raised eyebrow accompanied by a characteristic smirk.

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“‘Cause... ‘cause I love you,” he muttered.

“Can you actually look at me when you say that?”

“No.” Lance was quickly turning Keith into a sap, but old habits died hard. He wasn’t quite there yet. But Lance understood him, so that was okay. He’d get there eventually. He wanted to get there.

“Then can I have another kiss instead?”

“Heh. Sure.”

Keith kissed Lance again, and again, and the sun was bright around them and everything was warm. But no matter the weather, no matter the circumstances, even if they were far apart, Keith would always love Lance.

“Forever” didn’t have to be a scary thing after all.


	10. Family Does Not Care About Form

"This way, sis!"

Lance shouted that against the unusually strong wind and waved his arms in the air.

"You can do it," Keith added. He didn't entirely mean that, because what he was looking at wasn't very promising, but he was trying to be supportive.

It was a big day. Keith was dying to get back to his house, dying to see his older brother and his brother-in-law, but he'd promised Lance that they would go and pick up his sister first, and a promise to his boyfriend was a promise. Keith's little wagon vehicle waited behind them, ready to transport her, but first Veronica had to actually manage to cross the beach and get to them.

Keith could tell, even from a distance, that the approaching woman was Lance's sister, who was walking on her new legs for the very first time. He could tell because her sundress was damp and clinging to her thighs and she walked like she had broken both of her legs. Or like a newborn foal. She had her legs way too far apart and was walking on the sides of her feet, knees bent, back hunched, and arms out at her sides, ready to grab hold of the sand if she fell.

" _No_ , Veronica, no!" Lance shouted at her, laughing. "Bend your feet inwards and stand up straight!"

Veronica's feet were bare, like Lance's had been the first time Keith saw him.

"Like this?" Veronica stood up correctly, but turned her ankles inwards so much that her feet pointed at one another. Lance shook his head.

"No, that's even worse! You look like a chicken!" She _did_ look like a chicken, because her legs would shoot out in quick, jerky motions, uncertain, before they landed, and she looked like she was dragging herself more than like she was actually taking steps.

"What is a chicken?!" Keith snorted at that. He couldn't help it. "I do not understand these things, Lance! Come over here and help me!"

Before doing that, Lance turned to Keith and grinned, briefly squeezing his hand.

"Is that what I looked like?" He asked, gesturing at Veronica. He didn't have to add the "the first time you saw me on this very beach". Keith laughed.

"Not _that_ bad, no. Definitely suspicious, but apparently you figured out the walking thing pretty fast."

"I suppose so. Just wait here while I go and help her, okay? I don't want her embarrassing herself too badly."

Lance ran to his sister and let her dangle an arm over his shoulder. He'd gotten taller than her, so she had to tilt at an upwards angle to do so. Together, they made their way back to Keith. By the time they'd crossed the whole of the distance Veronica had gotten the gist of it. She still looked like she might fall over without warning, but she didn't look pained anymore, and that was a start.

She smiled and reached out a hand.

"You must be Keith."

Keith grinned as he took Veronica's hand and shook it. He was certain that Veronica had heard all about him. Lance had proven himself to be the kind of boyfriend that couldn't stop himself from gushing and bragging at any given opportunity. It was still a bit hard to believe that Lance legitimately thought Keith was worth bragging over.

On the ride back home, Keith listened to the siblings blabber on and on. He would have participated if he wasn't so distracted. They didn't seem to mind his silence much. They had a lot to discuss. Veronica had been on land for all of ten minutes and she was already overwhelmed with the sights and sounds and smells of it all. Lance rattled off the basics. Things that Keith had once had to teach him. Keith smiled as he reflected fondly on those early days, back when Lance had been an eccentric stranger who arrived on the wind carrying the promise of something grand and leaving a hollow desire for that warmth in his wake.

But there were even grander things to come. Lance explained the importance of the occasion as he ushered his sister indoors. Keith paced about trying to prepare things for the guests they were expecting, but he'd already done that when he'd paced around that morning waiting for Lance to finish combing his hair. Lance laughed as he practically forced Keith into a kitchen chair and insisted that he have lunch and settle down. 

"Human" lunch, of course, was a new experience for Veronica. She savored every bite of her sandwich like it was some incomparable delicacy. Veronica was definitely interesting, and Lance was eager to tell Keith all about her as they ate together, but frankly, Keith could hardly pay attention. He tapped the table impatiently as he waited for the sound of the front door. Veronica noticed his restlessness and grinned at Lance.

"You cannot blame him," she teased. "They have been looking forward to this day for a long while now, yes?"

Yes. _Yes_ , indeed.

Keith sprang to his feet when the doorbell rang. No sign of Shiro just yet. It was Allura, accompanied by some of the other scientists and a blonde girl, and she had a bouquet and a little gift bag. Almost all of the guests had come with gifts. Keith ushered them in quickly and told them to wait in the living room. It was a surprise, definitely, but the traditional kind of surprise party where everyone jumped out and shouted at once wouldn't be ideal in this situation. It was important that Shiro and Adam not be crowded when they got back home. 

The second group of visitors was for Adam. His mother and sister, his uncle, and a few of his friends from his competitive swimming days. They, too, came bearing gifts and cooperated with Keith's instruction. The living room was crowded by the time he had everyone settled in, but they kept each other entertained. They seemed to be taking bets on something. He had his guesses as to what, because he and Lance had a similar bet going.

Finally, Lance spotted the car— THE car— through the window and Keith heard the distant sound of the engine. He popped into the living room just long enough to shush everyone. Veronica and Lance joined them. Lance said something about letting Keith have that first moment with them alone, and Keith was grateful for that. He'd been afraid to ask, but Lance understood him enough to know what he wanted. No surprise at all considering it had been almost a year now that they'd been together.

The doorbell rang for the third time exactly on cue. Keith collected himself. He tried to. He sighed, resigning himself to the fact that he would probably cry at least a little bit. He counted to three, and then he opened the door. Shiro didn't seem to notice for a moment. He was too busy peering over Adam's shoulder, trying to get a look at the lavender bundle of fabric, small and soft, that Adam couldn't seem to tear his eyes from.

They looked tired. That was to be expected after spending the whole afternoon in the hospital. There were lines under Shiro's eyes, but they were otherwise warm. Adam's were still a bit watery.

"Hey, guys," Keith said. Shiro jolted in place before laughing softly. "Are you going to introduce me or not?"

"Right, right— Adam." Adam didn't respond. Shiro poked him. "...Adam!"

"Oh. Hi, Keith." Adam tucked his head in to talk to the bundle. "That's Keith. He's your uncle. Uncle Keith, understand?"

"She can't talk yet, Adam. And she's sleeping."

Keith grinned. _She_. Lance owed him fifty dollars. After another minute or so of prodding, Adam turned enough to allow Keith to see what he was holding. To see the newest member of his family for the first time.

The baby was almost unbelievably tiny. It was hard to comprehend that people started out at that size— that even Shiro, a man with such an enormously kind presence, had been that small in stature once.

"...Well?" Keith asked, pretending that there weren't fat tears nearly spilling out of the corners of his eyes. Shiro beamed down proudly at his little one and stroked her cheek with one finger.

"This is _Umiko_ ," he said. Keith laughed.

"Figured you'd pick something ocean-related, but I didn't know you were going Japanese."

"It goes better with my last name," Shiro explained with a shrug. Adam had taken that name as well, back when they'd tied the knot— he'd never liked or been close to his father and had been more than happy to get rid of his name, to adopt a new one with his new family, and his other relatives hadn't argued with that decision. "And her mother's originally from Japan, too. ...She appreciated it."

They stood around sobbing quietly for a minute or two before Keith tried to make himself presentable again and guided them inside. It was a good thing they hadn't gone for the jumpscare surprise, or else Adam might've dropped the baby. Instead, they both walked into the living room expecting to find empty sofas and instead found a group of friends and loved ones that had somehow become enormous, that had done so long before Keith had noticed it happening. 

"Grandma", of course, got to hold Umiko first, and she cradled her new pride and joy as everyone congratulated the happy couple and gave them their gifts. Umiko had been provided with almost everything she would need for her first few years of living, whether it was toys or books or clothes. Romelle (the blonde girl that Allura had brought with her) lamented the fact that it was surprisingly difficult to find cute baby clothes that were gender-neutral. Keith assured her that she'd managed just fine and that Umiko's wardrobe would be the envy of the nursery.

When all of the wrapping had been discarded and the conversations had been had and the presents had been tucked away, Shiro approached Keith with the infant. He shook his head reflexively, insisted that he didn't have to hand her over to him so soon.

"She has to meet her Uncle," Shiro laughed, as if Keith had said or done something totally ridiculous. Keith gulped as he was handed his niece. In truth, the thing that was making him nervous was all of the eyes on him. He didn't like looking so openly and unapologetically sappy in front of so many people if he could help it. He couldn't help it, though. Not now. Not today. And he had a feeling that Umiko wasn't going to judge him.

It was funny, really. She kind of looked like Shiro even though they didn't share any DNA. Keith wondered if that was in the color of her eyes or in the fact that her expression was so peaceful, so resolved. She had a surprising amount of jet-black hair for a newborn and Keith suspected that she'd be wearing it in ribbons in no time, that Shiro would carefully brush the tangles from her hair like he'd once done for Keith, that he would do it without hurting her delicate scalp. And he knew she was in good hands. That she would never want for anything. If not because of Adam and Shiro, then because Uncle Keith would be there when they couldn't. Uncle Keith would be the one she could go to when she needed help but didn't want to get in trouble. They would be partners in crime, too. He was sure of it.

Keith felt Lance's eyes on him and met them with his own. Lance's gaze kept flickering back and forth between him and the baby, a proud smile resting on his lips and an almost disgusting amount of affection in his eyes. Keith gestured towards him with the bundle. Lance threw up his hands in protest.

"N-No, I don't— I don't know how to hold them, you know? I wouldn't want to drop her."

If that was Lance's excuse, Keith wasn't going to let him have it. He nodded at Veronica. She scooted over a bit on the sofa and dragged her brother with her, making room for Keith on the other end. He plopped himself down there before Lance could argue with him. He sat so close to Lance that they pressed together at the sides, legs nearly overlapping, and then Keith carefully handed the baby over, adjusting Lance's arms for him as he went. Lance made some kind of squeaking sound under his breath and Keith laughed. 

"For the last time, we're not as fragile as you seem to think. She's alright, see?" Keith poked her nose. "It's Uncle Lance," he cooed at her.

Lance's head shot up to look at Keith. He wasn't entirely sure what the expression on the merman's face was. Bewilderment, maybe. Something close enough to jubilation that Keith could see the edges of it at the corners of his eyes and mouth. That mouth hung open for several too-long seconds.

"...I am?" He asked. Keith could have laughed at how silly that question was. Like he hadn't already been perfectly clear about the fact that he had no intentions of running away from this relationship. Lance was a permanent part of his life now and that made him family to Umiko in the same way that Adam was family to Keith.

The bundle was passed to Veronica, and eventually, to just about everyone in the room before she made her way back into Adam's arms. Everyone had been appropriately gentle and she'd hardly stirred at all.

"She'll make plenty of noise later," Shiro grimly reminded everyone as they said their goodbyes and exchanged crushing hugs, "but for now we'll enjoy the quiet."

Veronica thought that was funny. She thought most humans were funny, apparently, and she detailed that at length as she walked along the shoreline, Keith and Lance following closely behind her, the sun quickly becoming a fading memory against the peach-colored sky. It was almost time for her to rejoin her kind underwater and she seemed to be postponing it. Keith understood that much.

She turned and gave Keith a smile that seemed a bit sad. He understood that, too— she was going to miss having her brother around all the time like she'd used to, and she knew that Lance had found a new home for himself here, and that was a melancholy thought. But above that, she was happy for the happiness that Lance had found. That was the more important thing. They said this to one another with their eyes, her and Keith.

"It was... a pleasure to meet you," she said. "I will be sure to tell the others that you have my approval, at the very least."

The time, Keith allowed her to give him a polite hug. Maybe it was safe to consider her a sister-in-law? He'd save that question for a later date.

They didn't watch her retreat into the sea. Lance said that it was a private thing. They turned their backs, reflected on the day, and she was gone by the time they turned back around. Like she had dissolved into sea foam. Keith had forgotten about how startling that was to experience firsthand.

They stared, together, at the water. Keith breathed in the salt of the air and felt alive. Lance squeezed his hand and smiled at him and gestured vaguely with his head, and without having to say anything, Keith knew what he was suggesting. They stripped off their socks and shoes and their shirts before they waded together into the water. Keith was still too elated to care about something as minuscule as getting his pants wet. They swam around, and they splashed one another, and then Lance seized Keith and pulled him underwater. A flash of light and they were both breathing as easily as they would have on land. Keith had gotten used to this by now— almost dangerously so. He sometimes forgot that he couldn't do it on his own.

"It's almost finished, isn't it?" Lance asked with a teasing smile. Keith looked up as he recalled what a travesty the beach had once been. The sand, these days, was mostly clear.

"...Now that you mention it, it is. It should be ready within the next month or two."

"So it'll be open to the public soon."

"Soon, soon- _ish_ , something like that. Why?"

Lance smirked mischievously and captured both of Keith's hands, pulling him into some kind of underwater slow dance.

"Don't you think an ocean wedding would be romantic?"

Keith chuckled.

"You know that we can't _actually_ get married—"

"W-Well, yes, I'm aware." Lance was grimly aware of the fact that since he wasn't a human, he didn't have proper ID and couldn't acquire things like a driver's license or a marriage certificate. Which complicated things from time to time, sure, but they made it work. "But that doesn't mean we can't have our own little ceremony, does it?"

Keith contemplated that for a long moment, feigning an expression of disinterest.

"I guess not. ...Still, that depends on what you mean by 'ocean' wedding."

"You know. Underwater."

"I don't think that would be practical. Unless you can convince the whole congregation to show up in bathing suits and agree to letting you magic-zap them." Keith tilted his head to one side in thought. "Come to think of it... we could have separate ceremonies. One for your family and one for mine."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, think about it. We could do your underwater thing with your family in a nice reef, you could wear your fancy prince gear, and we could do a separate thing for my family on the beach."

"What if it's a procession? What if we start at my underwater home and the procession leads to the beach and we dramatically rise from the water?"

Keith snickered.

"That sounds nice in theory, but you're forgetting something. If we're rising out of the water you'd have to grow legs, so you'd be naked. Is that what you want at your wedding? To flash everyone in attendance?"

"... _Oh_." Lance made a sour face, likely embarrassed at having overlooked that detail. "Well, we'll work something out."

They would work something out, Keith thought. He would like that. He was hardly scared of anything anymore. He was in a place now where he could proudly declare to the whole world that he loved Lance and was going to spend the rest of his life with him and he didn't care what anyone else had to say about it. The subject of fear, though, reminded him of something. Something else that he'd been meaning to address but that had been lost in the day's events.

"By the way," Keith said, coughing awkwardly, "I signed up for a little, um, a club, I guess. Surfing."

Lance froze.

"...You did?"

"Yeah. I did. Even if it's not what I want to do professionally anymore, I don't want to spend the rest of my life being afraid of it. And I want to remember why I used to love it so much. I figure it's alright to have a hobby, isn't it? To do it casually on the side?"

"It's most certainly okay," Lance agreed, and he sounded like he'd deflated, almost. Like his chest was being squeezed tight and it forced the words out as more of a wheezing laugh than a sentence. He tightened his grip on Keith's hands and pulled him close until he gave them up in the interest of wrapping his arms around his neck and shoulders and pulling him into an embrace. He sighed happily as their chests pressed together. "You never cease to amaze me."

"Well, I try." Keith smiled. He'd elaborate later, perhaps, on why that was— how many of his recent triumphs were owed to his loved ones. Lance already knew that he was part of that equation.

The sun fell below the line of the horizon before long, and so Keith and Lance returned, both slightly damp and feeling very light, to a quiet and darkened home. Keith changed into something dry before he tiptoed his way into his brother's bedroom. There was a cream-colored bassinet set up by the bed, the edge of which both Shiro and Adam were sitting on, just staring, neither one saying anything. Keith joined them for a little while. He didn't say anything either. No one had to. Umiko slept. They looked at her. That was all.

"They're still in awe," Keith laughed when he got to his own bedroom, where Lance waited in his usual spot.

"Yes, well, so are you."

"...Only a little."

"A little? Why were you gone so long?"

"Oh, shut up."

Lance laughed at the half-hearted insult as he waited for Keith to settle in. Lance was something like a body pillow. He never seemed to overheat or demand more space no matter how clingy Keith was feeling.

"Judging by how quickly this past year went by, she'll be walking and speaking in no time at all. Can you imagine that?" Lance half-whispered. Keith watched his lips move.

"Don't get me started. ...I don't feel like crying again. Not yet."

Lance teased him about that for a little while, messing up Keith's hair, before he fell asleep. He always seemed to do so quickly. Keith was admittedly envious of that. He watched him for a while. And Lance was right— he was still in awe, but for more reasons than one. He could still hardly wrap his head around the fact that his rag-tag family of three had become a family of five practically overnight. And that number would only continue to grow as he got to know Lance's siblings, and eventually his parents, maybe even the niece and nephew he'd mentioned. 

 _That's right_ — Lance was already an uncle. Keith grinned as he brushed a stray hair from Lance's forehead.

"Tomorrow morning," he decided, talking very quietly and only to himself. "...Yeah. Tomorrow we'll get up early and you can show me the ropes."

He planted a tender kiss on Lance's cheek before he, too, fell asleep, dreaming about a simple wedding on the beach.


	11. a tiny deleted scene

“Why are you always here when—“

“Memphis.”

“...What?”

“I am from Memphis,” Lance clarified. Keith sighed. He wasn’t an American himself, but he’d been there plenty of times. 

“No you’re not. Memphis is in the South. You don’t have an accent.” Keith was bluffing a bit. Not all Southerners sounded Southern, especially if they’d been away a while. But he could tell that Lance was lying and didn’t plan on letting him get away with it. 

“...Oh.” Lance scratched his chin. “New York City?”

“That could work.”

“Alright. Then I am from New York City. The ‘big apple’, as you say.”

“I don’t... I don’t think people from there actually call it that.”


End file.
